


Runes and Ruins

by ImpishFics



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempted Sexual Assault, Bad Parenting, Bullying, Catholicism, Christianity, Gay Bashing, Han Jisung | Han & Lee Felix are Siblings, Homophobia, Lee Felix-centric (Stray Kids), M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mentioned NCT Dream Ensemble, Mentioned Stray Kids Ensemble, Mentioned TWICE Ensemble, Murder, No Sex, No Underage Sex, Suspense, Thriller, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:49:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27255223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishFics/pseuds/ImpishFics
Summary: He’s eight years old and the water runs red.Felix's brother was sent away when he was eight, and now he's coming back into his life.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Felix
Comments: 21
Kudos: 104
Collections: Stray Kids SpookFest





	Runes and Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> This is being posted for skz spookfest 2020, thank you so much to the Mods for letting me self-prompt so I could continue working on this fic that I started almost perfectly a year ago.  
> A GREAT BIG HUGE thank you to Nova and Kirby for being incredible amazing beta's write upt to the wire!.
> 
> THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR THIS TO MAKE SENSE  
> -Jisung and Chris are both 98' liners  
> -Jisung and Felix are brothers

He’s eight years old and the water runs red. 

-

His sister has a Bratz “Forever Diamondz” makeup kit that their aunt bought her and she hates it. Most of the time. Most of the time she says it feels like chalk and flour and like she’s slathering sticky goo just to make her lips look like slobber. Even if it feels like chalk Felix doesn’t mind because he’s always loved playing with chalk, unafraid to crawl across it and let it settle in his palms and on top of scraped and already dirty knees if he can draw whatever he wants. Shapes - all of his own designs - curvy and sharp and however he pleases. 

He doesn't like drawing people. Sometimes the kids at school or on the playground will ask him to draw them but he doesn't answer, he just draws his shapes. His mother asks him to draw her and he pretends he can’t hear.

His sister’s make up feels good on his arm; he swirls the eyeshadow in spirals. She always lets him play with it even if she’s just going to read next to him. They tell their mother the designs on his arms and cheeks are from her and she doesn't get angry. His sister hates it most of the time but sometimes together they swipe it on their cheeks and eyelids and hide under the sink giggling. The book in the kit says people with brown eyes should wear green, but his sister’s favorite color is blue and Felix only ever uses red and yellow. 

His father complains that Felix will only use the yellow and red chalk, chalk can’t be bought individually. Felix’s father will not buy him more chalk, so Felix learns to make friends. 

Not friends with the kids who asked him to draw them, but other kids drawing, he will trade them any color for red or yellow. He’ll even give up blue, the most sought-after color on the playground. That’s how he meets Chris. Chris gives him the red and yellow and watches him draw. 

“I won’t draw you,” Felix says, after a few days of Chris watching Felix draw his shapes. 

“I think you’re drawing runes.”

-

Felix’s brother is gone and his mother won't tell him where but he already knows. He remembers watching him drown a possum in the creek. It doesn't make him love the creek any less. It might make him love his brother less. 

-

Chris wants to open an apothecary when he’s older. He lives with his grandmother and steals books from the library. He loves Felix’s runes, and sometimes he tells Felix what they mean. 

“You draw that one when you’re sad.” Felix supposes he does. Chris reads his stolen library books next to Felix as he draws. 

“Come here.” 

“I’m busy drawing.” 

“You gotta.” Felix toddled over and Chris pointed at his book. He was better at reading than Felix was; he was older and could read longer and bigger words. There were cave drawings. 

“They used flowers and plants and rocks.” He had looked up at Felix then, up from his book. “This is what your runes need.”

-

Felix watched his brother trudge out of the high sides of the creek and head back towards town from where he was hidden behind a rock. He emerged and took off his sketchers and wandered into the water. Jisung had left the possum to float. Felix moved it with sticks to the side, and cried as he dug a shallow grave in the creek bed, and cried harder when he had to touch it to place it in. 

He tried to say a prayer but he didn’t get all his words right or in the right order. Chris probably would have. Felix hasn’t been to church in a while. 

-

It takes a while for Chris and Felix to get the mixture right. Chris adds saps and oils from his grandmother’s kitchen cupboard and Felix spends hours collecting flowers and berries from nearby prairies and they convene in the creek. About a half mile downstream from the trail bridge that crosses the creek, there are a few fallen trees that obscure a section. Once Felix crawls under those trees he needs only walk a bit further and veer left until he finds it. Here in this part of the creek, the water is a bit deeper and a bit colder and the rocks a bit bigger; there’s a small outcropping of rocks that form a mouth of the world's smallest cave. It’s just deep enough to stand under when it rains but when he sits, his back against the cool stone, his legs peek out. 

This is Chris and Felix’s hideout, and this is where Chris decides Felix’s runes should go. 

“Maybe in hundreds of years they’ll find this place and your runes and think an ancient civilization did them!” Chris babbles as he crushes dandelions between two relatively flat stones 

Felix thinks as he squishes red berries into a stolen container of his mother's tupperware. 

“Maybe by then we _will_ be an ancient civilisation.” 

Chris stops crushing his flower and looks at Felix. 

“Woah” he says, and then they both laugh. 

Felix sticks one small berry-juice-covered hand in the cool stream to rinse it and the water runs red. 

-

“God I’m so sick of this!” Jeongyeon is throwing a fit in a way that only Felix’s thirteen year old sister is capable of. “Just because he went full psycho and had to be locked up doesn’t mean _we’re_ going to!” She’s fuming, waving her hands at their father and glaring at their mother, venom falling off her tongue. She doesn't want to go see Dr. Greene today, not anymore. Felix doesn't either. “Stop treating us like we’re ticking time bombs! He did that, not us, he’s crazy, not us!” 

“Don’t call your brother crazy.” Their father scolds them with a steady tone even if Felix didn’t say anything. 

His mother adds in a shaky voice, “he’s not crazy he’s just...” She takes a steadying breath and Felix grabs her hand because even if he doesn’t know what’s going on he knows what pain looks like on his mother’s face. She looks at him as she says her next words: “He’s just sick, and he isn’t locked up, he’s somewhere where he can get help.” Another pause. Felix smiles at her and she smiles back even if Jeongyeon scoffs behind him. “And he loves you very, very much.” 

-

After that he draws his mother’s picture when she asks and tries not to feel too weird drawing it with a pencil and not the pad of his finger. She coos at it, and maybe drawing people isn’t all bad. 

He makes friends when he enters the fourth grade and finally starts drawing his classmates when they ask and responding when they talk to him. There are kids to play with on the playground and to trade snacks with at lunch. 

Still, every weekend Felix treks down the stream, crawls under the fallen trees, scrambles past the sharp rocks to his and Chris’s hideout. And Chris always meets him there. 

-

It comes on a Saturday in late September, after Felix’s birthday but before Chris’s, Chris says this is the perfect time. They’re closer in age than ever, and even if they’re always the same amount of days apart, when Felix is nine and Chris is still ten it feels closer. 

Chris brings chipped and abandoned teacups from his grandmother’s collection to hold the pigment, and after much debate they decide that Felix will use two sticks of different sizes and his finger. 

Chris lines up the tea cups - just two because they only need two colors: red and yellow. He hands Felix the sticks and sits back against a rock to watch him work. 

Felix knew what he wanted to draw. He could see it clearly in his head so he got to work. Sometimes Chris would talk, commenting on what it meant or what he thought others might think it meant; sometimes he would hum or sing lightly and sometimes Felix recognized it but mostly he didn’t. Mostly Chris watched. The sun was just about to go down when Felix finished. His arm ached from stretching it and holding it up so long but he felt so relieved. It was exactly as he imagined it. 

“It’s perfect.” Chris agreed, and hugged Felix tight. 

-

The runes were done but Chris and Felix still met up every weekend. Sometimes they would sit in their cave and Felix would draw Chris in the sketch book his mum got him for his birthday. Chris never asked Felix to draw his picture but he didn’t have to. Felix wanted to. When Felix drew, Chris would read more books stolen from the library, or play his grandfather’s mini guitar. It was important to Chris that it was called a mini guitar and not a ukelele “Ukuleles have four strings, a mini guitar has six, so it's harder!” Either way, Felix liked the sound of it. 

Some days they would spend hours and hours exploring the woods but they never found as good of a spot as theirs. 

-

Chris goes to year seven before Felix. Of course, he tells himself, Chris is older. He knew this would happen. But it doesn’t stop Felix from being anxious. What if Chris finds new friends? What if he suddenly decides he doesn't want to hang out with some lame younger kid anymore? No, Felix knows he won’t do that, he’s too good. Chris is too good. 

He comes to the creek with a grimace the first day after year seven starts. He hates the older kids. They all think they’re so much better than them and he’s always lost in the school. He has no clue who to sit with at lunch, and the teachers seem to think they’re both older and younger than they are. 

Chris says he’s relieved to be with Felix. Felix is relieved he’s still here, because for the first time in their friendship Felix had felt the possibility of an end and it only makes him want to hold on more. 

-

Chris eventually makes friends but while that happens Felix’s friend circle expands. He finds himself in a crowd of popular kids - all richer than him - and he isn’t quite sure why but he won’t protest it. On weekdays they hang out at ‘the spot’ which isn’t nearly as cool as Chris’s and his hideout but he doesn't say anything. He has self preservation tactics. 

Instead they hang out at the basketball court near the 7/11. On rainy days they hide out inside and ignore the glares of the cashiers. Felix always has his notebook and pencils and he draws, he draws the glaring cashiers, and his loud friends, and the dog across the street who he's too scared to ask to pet. 

-

When Felix is in sixth year Jisung starts sending letters. Before then, there was radio silence. Four times a year Felix’s parents would leave them with the neighbors and go visit him and come back and tell them things. “He’s doing well.” “Each day he feels a little more well.” “He loves you so much.” “He looks healthier each visit!” His mum comes back looking bright and his father’s face is set in stone. 

One year when she came back, Felix’s mother had held him on the couch in her arms and Felix hadn’t fought it. She held him and whispered about his brother, words he soaked up because it wasn’t often he could hear them. “He looks better, he’s getting better, and I’m confident that someday, someday he’ll come home and I can hold both of you here, just like this. My two boys, together again.” Then she had pressed her face into his hair, and sniffed his hair. Afterward, her eyes were misty. “I'm not allowed to hold him,” she offered. Felix didn’t ask for more, only held her tighter. 

That’s why when the letters come it’s a big deal. One large envelope, stuffed to the brim with four smaller envelopes: each of their names printed in shaky handwriting. Felix reads his next to Jeongyeon on the couch after their parents left to their room with theirs. Felix’s is longer than Jeongyeon’s. 

He tells Felix about a game he’s made up; it seems complicated but also fun and can be played with a few people. Felix tries to imagine running around the woods with his brother and Chris but he can’t quite picture it. He tells Felix that he’s made a friend that reminds him of him, Jeongin, who he sometimes pretends is Felix. He can’t wait to play with Felix.

Jeongyeon’s letter is shorter and it says the same thing in a lot of ways. He’s sorry, he hopes for her forgiveness. He’s atoning for what he’s done and each day he asks for forgiveness. He’s sorry he’s sorry he’s sorry. He hopes they can be friends again. 

Felix’s parents announce the next night over dinner that they are going to start going to church again: Jisung’s found hope in returning to faith and they think it would be good for the whole family to support him. Jeongyeon’s silence is icy and lined with jagged edges. 

When Felix’s dad leaves for the post office with responses to Jisung, Jeongyeon’s letter is noticeably absent. 

-

Chris and Felix can no longer spend Sunday mornings in the creek and for as much as the older throws a fit about it, it’s not that bad. Felix gets home from church and tears out of his Sunday best and throws on his creek clothes, jorts and whatever shirt is closest and runs to the creek. Chris is already waiting in their hideout and he lights up when Felix joins.

Felix splashes him and laughs when Chris yelps and his voice cracks. The water is still freezing and Felix laughs when Chris gets him back. Chris’s voice is cracking more and more, meaning he’s changing, growing up, and Felix once again feels painfully left behind. 

He’s growing up and changing.

-

Jisung, in his next letter, sends a small piece of paper, a tic tac toe board not yet filled out and a small note in the same shakey writing as the letter: “place an o and send me back!” Felix puts his o in the middle in a red marker and sends it back with his letter. 

He tells his brother about the friends he’s making in church, and it's the truth. The church has a dance team that Hyunjin convinced him to join and it’s fun. Hyunjin is nice and smells good, and shows him how to make fortune tellers out of the pamphlets the church ladies hand out. He doesn’t tell Jisung about that part. 

Jisung still sends letters to Jeongyeon and she reads every single one, even if they only make her angry. 

-

Chris is getting closer with his friends. Sometimes he has sleepovers at their houses on Fridays and is late to their spot on Saturday mornings. Except Chris doesn’t call them sleepovers anymore, he says he spends the night, even if it is just a sleepover. It’s not much but Chris is changing. 

Chris likes his friends, like, really likes them. He tells Felix about them. Bambam is loud and bright and can talk to anyone, Sana is funny and keeps them together, Yugyeom can play the piano and dance, and Minho reads books with him. Minho has convinced Chris to stop stealing the library books and start returning them. His mum works at the library. Chris wants Felix to meet them and he agrees, because they sound fun, and because Chris looks so happy at the idea. It’s a mistake. 

Chris is older than Felix and it was never so apparent as it is when Felix is with Chris’s friends. They’re even older, and even if they aren't they feel it. Yugyeom is tall and broad already having his growth spurt, it makes Felix feel even smaller. Sana and Bambam keep telling jokes about people and things Felix doesn’t know, things he doesn’t understand, and Chris keeps laughing and telling jokes. His mouth keeps saying things Felix isn’t ready for. He feels like his calculator is broken, saying two plus two is five when Felix knows different.

It gets better when they go to a dance studio and Yugyeom and Minho teach Felix some dance moves. His church dance moves aren't that impressive to people who have been to actual classes but at least he knows something. They teach him a routine they are learning and it seems to be going okay, but when he messes up and Bambam laughs at him Chris laughs too. 

Felix doesn’t hang out with Chris’s friends after that. Chris doesn’t ask. 

-

Jisung wins the first round of tic tac toe just in time for Easter. The stained glass windows are draped in purple silks that match the fancy clothes of the priests and the purple cross pins the church ladies are handing out. Felix pins his to his oversized suit and walks the stations of the cross for the first time since he was five years old. His mum says they are meant to be taken at your own pace; Jeongyeon races ahead of them flipping long straightened hair over her shoulder.

She doesn't like church much. Jeongyeon likes video games under Felix’s bed. They aren’t allowed any violent games but they’ve beaten Portal like five times each. Jeongyeon doesn’t bring friends around, but he wishes she would so they could play Mario Party together. Sometimes their dad will play with them but he sucks at the mini games. 

Felix walks the stations of the cross with Hyunjin. They go slow, and sometimes they’ll glance at each other and smile. Felix really likes Hyunjin. He wishes that he didn’t go to the private catholic school because then maybe Hyunjin would be in his class. Maybe Hyunjin can come over and play Mario Party with them. Maybe he can spend the night, like Chris would say. 

Maybe Chris could come too. 

-

Chris gets bored with the dry season. For the first time in years they explore, further, farther, more than before. If they follow the creek south, it doesn’t stay going south; after about thirty minutes it curves southwest according to Chris’s compass and the trees get taller, thinner, and closer together. Felix can still climb them. He can go higher than Chris and so he sticks his tongue out at him. Chris’s growth spurt made his arms grow first, and his wingspan is just wide enough now, and the trees just close enough together that sometimes he can climb them the way kids spider climb doorways. It makes Felix laugh. Spider Chris. They go farther. 

The slate is slippier under Felix’s calloused soles, the creek here made up of layers of smooth plates of rock instead of the bigger more textured rocks Felix is used to. They have to go slower. The creek collapses into a waterfall that’s exhilarating and terrifying to climb down, but it leads to a pearlescent blue-green pool. 

The water is still warm, but it won’t be for much longer. The warm summer rains are leaving, but the water is warmer than the air. It’s easy for them to tear out of their clothes and dive in, chasing each other in the water. Even their peals of laughter aren't loud enough to be heard over the crash of the waterfall. 

They don’t go to the pool every weekend, it’s far and an hour and a half walk, and there are critters to be careful of, but it’s worth it when they go. Surrounded by tall trees, not accessible by the roads, over an hour away from anyone who will tell them what to do. At least once a month they’ll fill their backpacks with snacks and hike out, even when it's too cold to swim, and they don big sweatshirts, they’ll still make the trek to sit on the edge and stick their feet in. 

They make plans. 

-

The next tic tac toe game after many months is a draw, and the games are forgotten. Instead Felix tells Jisung stories. He’s so far away; he’s the only person in Felix’s life for whom he can’t picture reactions to the things he says. In his head when he thinks about talking to his father he can imagine the clench of his jaw, he can picture his mother's eyes wide with worry, or the dismissive huff Jeongyeon might make. He can imagine Hyunjin’s grin, or the way Chris’s shoulders hike up when he disagrees, but when he imagines Jisung reading his letters he can’t picture anything. He has emotions, he can see it in his writing, the way his letters slant when he’s excited, or the space between words indicating a pause to think. But he can’t picture his face. He was young when his brother left, and he must be different than the big cheeked shaggy hair he vaguely remembers, so he doesn’t picture anything at all. 

And since he can’t see in his head his reaction, can’t hear his questions, he tells him, his brother, about Chris and their hideout. And their pool. The walk they take and fun they have. And now there's one more person who knows, it’s no longer just Chris and Felix. But most days, Jisung doesn’t feel quite real. 

-

The time comes. Felix’s birthday passes and he’s thirteen, a real teenager, officially. The plans are set, the materials gathered. They set it in motion. Felix asks his mum if he can stay one weekend at Chris’s grandmother’s house. They want to go camping in the backyard and celebrate their birthdays together. She brushes her hand through his hair, and it makes him shiver, her hands are always cold, her fingers skinny. 

“Doesn’t that sound lovely.” His mum says yes of course, yes he can miss church this week. His father digs a two man tent from storage for Felix to use. His father looks at it sort of sadly, the way he looks at calendars and family photos, and the things his mother puts on the fridge. 

“Haven’t used this since I took your brother out years ago.” 

“Where did you go?” Felix has never gone camping with his father. His father grunts. 

“South.” Felix’s father is a man of few words, he expects that to be it. “We liked hiking more than fishing.” 

“I like hiking.” Is it too late to go hiking with his dad?

“How do you know?” Felix shrugs, and swallows his lies, he’s not sure why. “Seems fun.” Felix doesn’t think it's shameful, but it’s not his father’s to know. 

Felix doesn’t know exactly what Chris tells his grandmother, he assumes it is much the same, a trip to Felix’s house for the weekend. Chris’s grandmother is old and strict, but she lets Felix make her tea and plays backgammon with him while Felix waits for Chris to finish his chores so they can go out. 

They meet at their hideout, this place that used to be their ending spot, but now it's where they meet to start. If he and Chris were a bar chart, the type Felix hastily scrawls for science, he wonders if this spot would be their origin. 

They meet at their hideout. Felix comes with the tent, his sketchbook, and two boxes of pop tarts. Chris has more food, “real food,” sleeping bags, and his mini guitar. They take off their shoes, tie them together and hang them from Chris’s backpack and walk the creek the whole way. It’s slightly longer but worth it to keep their feet in the cool water, to feel the current on their shins. 

Chris plays some while they walk, but his fingers hurt after a bit, though Felix isn’t sure how long. His watch isn’t waterproof, so he left it home. His sketchbook isn’t waterproof either, but he brought that. The waterfall feels especially treacherous with so much on his back but Felix makes it just fine; he doesn’t have to think about where he puts his feet. 

They get there after lunch and eat sandwiches Chris packed, turkey and salami and cheese and no vegetables. It’s okay because he has carrot stix. 

They set up the tent. At least, they try to. It’s hopeless at first, as neither of them have done it before, and the instructions aren’t much of instructions. Chris gets frustrated and takes a walk. Felix sits down and reads the instructions again. He hammers the stakes into the earth with his closed fist and hooks the base to them. He undoes the poles, and when Chris gets back they thread them through together. The tarp is the easiest part yet. 

The sun's beginning to set, tinting the pool pink and red. The poptarts they share taste like victory. They strip off their shirts and jump in the water. Who can make the biggest splash? Chris. Who can hold their breath the longest? Felix. Who can dive the deepest? It’s a tie; the lake is only about three Chrises deep at the deepest part.

Felix and Chris sit at the bottom of a more shallow point, both fully underwater, their hair floating around them like feathery halos. Felix waves at Chris, and Chris waves back. Chris opens his mouth and Felix can see bubbles being released before the noises reach him. He can tell he’s talking but Felix can’t understand. The water eats what he says back. Chris responds again, and Felix laughs, and all his air goes with it. He bursts to the surface, coughing and hacking and laughing, and Chris surfaces a moment later smiling crookedly through his own coughing. 

“What did you try and say?” Felix asks. 

“You should have listened!” Chris sticks out his tongue. 

“That’s not fair.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because I’m _always_ listening.” Felix pokes him in the shoulder. Chris takes it back. 

“You’re right. You’re a good listener.” 

“You say stuff worth listening to.” 

They race to the top of the waterfall and then pause. They talked about it but neither of them have jumped off the waterfall yet. Chris goes first, but Felix is the first to try and do a flip off of it. They swim until they are both so hungry they eat four poptarts each. 

It’s so nice, but Felix is so aware of its lifespan. This weekend is a contained thing, just two days. Felix didn’t bring his watch but he can hear the clock ticking. 

“You wanna see something Minho showed me?” Felix nods. He generally likes knowing things, and he generally prefers when Chris is the one to teach him. 

And then Chris steals his first kiss. Just like that, chapped lips and wet hair. And then they eat more poptarts. 

-

The creek is already warmer than when they left when they walk back on Sunday. Felix should be in church now. Except he shouldn’t be anywhere except here, barefoot in the creek with Chris, slowly letting their world slip away and entering a much colder one, even if they can feel the sun better without the cover of the trees. The round a bend and Felix can hear shouting in the distance. They’re close, maybe thirty minutes from where they enter the creek. Chris doesn’t care but Felix runs ahead and Chris jogs after him. 

Someone’s yelling, multiple voices, calling maybe, and there's something familiar in them, and then he gets closer and it's _his_ name. 

“Felix! Felix Lee!” Felix runs towards the voices, his brain locking in on one.

“Dad?” Felix yells back, running, when he looks back Chris is following, but only just fast enough that Felix can still see him. His face is ashen. He’s going too fast, the rocks of the creek bed cutting into his feet are reminder to go slow that he doesn’t heed. He chases after the echoes of his own name. He sees figures in the distance; the one in the orange windbreaker is his dad, he knows. 

“Felix!” 

“Dad!” He hugs his dad, he doesn’t know why, it feels right. When was the last time he hugged his dad? 

“Oh my god you safe, you’re safe, where were you? We were so worried.” Felix looks up at his father. Felix has only wrong answers. Felix is bursting with them, full up to the brim, Felix only has wrong answers. Felix looks back, so does his dad.Chris is just rounding the corner. Felix looks up. 

In this lifetime, Felix will never be as tall as his father. 

“Camping.” 

His father is bigger than him. It makes sense that his hand is so big, but still it's a shock when it collides with the side of Felix’s head so hard it knocks him sideways and backwards, into the cool water. He catches himself on his hands on the rocks, he can feel them tear, book ends to the cuts on his feet. His father is talking, shouting, 

“Do you know how worried we were, your mother has been sick with worry, and the neighbors even came to look for you. We thought you were kidnapped, what's wrong with you-” But Felix’s ear is ringing, gone funkey where his father hit it, he’s wet and cold, and bleeding. But not enough to make the water tint any color, he watches the gentle current whisk away thin diluted ribbons of his blood. 

His dad is still talking, spit flying. Felix sits up, squatting in the creek, he looks at his hands, he can see the blood coming to the surface. He looks at Chris, he’s staring, obviously worried, no one from Chris’s family is in the creek looking for him. Felix wonders if his grandma could even make it down here. He wants to tell Chris he’s fine. Then his father is yanking on his arm, pulling him out of the creek. 

“It’s that boy, that boy. He’s the reason.” His arm hurts and Chris still has Felix’s shoes tied to his bag. Dirt gets in his cuts, and gravel of the asphalt. He’s pulled all the way up the sides down the street and shoved into his dad's car. He gets the seat wet. 

He doesn’t drive to the creek, he can’t remember the last time he has, he walks. You can’t cut through people back yards in a car, it turns out. The way looks different, he’s between what must be his two most frequented locations, but he feels lost. He doesn’t recognize the green house, or that fire hydrant, and it’s weird. It’s weird. He’s lost. 

His dad doesn’t need to drag him anymore when he pulls into the driveway, he doesn’t need to be yanked or hit to do this. He get out of the car. 

“Our room.” His father says after him, it sounds more tired than it had before, no longer like rocks on a tin roof, something resigned in it. 

He walks in, leaves his backpack, still wet, on the porch. He resists the urge to check his sketchbook, to see if all the colors have run. He can feel the weight of his father's eyes on his back. He leaves his backpack on the porch and walks inside, wipes his feet on the mat, but still tracks dirt and half the creek with him on to the carpet on the walk to his mother's room. 

The door is cracked, he pushes it open, and she looks up, she looks awful. A heap on the bed, in her robe a phone to her ear, kleenex around her but unwiped snot and tears on her face. She must have given up at some point. At cleaning her face. 

The gasp she lets out is deep and wet, full of something, emotion and phlegm. And she crawls forward on the full bed, desperately, Felix rushes forward to meet her, he doesn’t doubt that she might fall off the bed in her desire to reach him. She pulls him to her grabbing whatever she can reach first, his cheeks, his shoulder a forearm, pulling him into her chest, squeezing so tight he might break. 

She sobs, a wet and horrible thing but at least it’s in relief. She pats him, outlining his back and his head as if checking he’s still there. 

“We were so,” she takes a shudderry gasp, “so worried, thank god you’re safe. I thought you had been taken, taken away, taken from me I’m just so, so, so-” she cuts herself off, “Where were you?”

“Chris and I went camping. For our birthdays.” 

“You were?” Admittedly his mum doesn’t hit as hard as his dad, but it _stings_. The force on the back of his head makes him tip his chin down and then she’s pulling him into her again and sobbing louder. 

“I'm sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me, I love you, your mother loves you, I was just so worried, I thought I had lost you…” the “too” hangs heavy and unspoken in every sentence she speaks. Felix allows himself to be crushed into her, he wraps his arms around her, the fabric of her towel robe feels rough against his hands in a way it never has before. 

She tires herself out. He’s reminded of when he was young, when his brother was gone and he’d been so scared and confused he had sobbed and hiccuped until he passed right out. She lets go and he’s sent to his room. The neon oven clock reads 1:54 when he passes by. His dad is drinking a beer on the back porch when he passes the windows. He cleans his feet in the tub. 

His sister sits on the toilet seat lid across from him. 

“Are you going to yell at me too?” 

“No. Did you have fun? A good birthday?”

“Yeah, it was really fun. Bad ending.” 

“Bad ending.” Jeongyeon agrees. “Is Chris, is he nice to you?”

Felix snorts. “He’s my best friend.” 

“Good.” Jeongyeon has friends. She goes places with them and some of them have cars. He doesn’t know if she has a best friend; she doesn’t like to talk about her friends. Doesn’t like to tell their parents their last names. They trust her. Felix does too. 

“How did they realize?” She stiffens. 

“They didn’t say? They tried to call you at Chris’s house but you weren’t there.” Only a few things can make his sister look like that. He shakes his head. And it's like Felix knows the answer before she says it. “Next year, while I’m at Uni, they are going to release him. Next year Jisung is coming home.” 

-

Felix isn’t allowed to leave the house except for school and church for six weeks. That's forty-two days without seeing Chris, the longest they have ever gone. At least he can see his friends at school, and Hyunjin at church, but Chris and him don’t see each other. Technically they go to the same school, but it would be weird. Chris is two years older, and he has his own friends, sometimes should their paths cross they’ll wave, but they don’t pass often. 

Felix is two weeks and one day into his punishment when Chris yanks his arm at lunch, dragging him away from where him and his friends meet up. Chris drags him down the hall and into a small maintenance corridor. 

“Where were you this weekend? I get last weekend but you didn’t show this weekend either. Is something wrong?” He speaks quietly and urgently. Felix wonders what this might look like to someone else. 

“I'm grounded. For four more weeks.” 

“Shit.” Felix would agree with that. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“We don’t talk during school.” Felix shrugs. 

“These are extenuating circumstances,” he continues on, “plus it's not like a rule or anything.” 

“Sometimes things that aren’t rules can feel more serious than rules.” Chris tilts his head to the side, trying to understand, then he shakes his head, shaking off Felix’s words. 

“You missed my birthday.” The drawing he had made Chris was ruined with his sketchbook.

“We celebrated our birthdays together,” Felix points out. 

“Still.” 

“Still,” Felix agrees, “I'm sorry.” 

Chris tilts his head, thinking again, and then looks around checking their surroundings. 

“If you give me a kiss on the cheek I’ll forgive you.” He’s already smiling, and Felix doesn’t _have_ to, but he does, and he is. 

-

Hyunjin isn’t allowed to do anything for Halloween. 

“We don’t even hand out candy. Last year our neighbor’s kid cried when my mum turned them away.” Truth be told Felix isn’t the biggest fan of Halloween but he did like trick or treating when he was little and allowed to. Now he likes to watch scary movies and hand out candy with Jeongyeon. She never does anything for Halloween even though he knows her friends ask. It’s nice. Jeongyeon likes the old black and white movies, and those are less scary to Felix, plus there are a lot of young kids in their neighborhood so it's very cute. 

Hyunjin isn’t allowed to do anything for Halloween for the same reason he wasn’t allowed to watch Pokémon and he’s isn’t allowed to play League of Legends: his mum doesn’t let him do anything that falls along “the devil’s path.” Felix would laugh at it more probably if he didn’t feel so bad for Hyunjin. So he concocts a plan with Hyunjin. On Halloween Hyunjin sleeps over at Felix’s house, after a long conversation on the phone between their mums and the assurance that they were friends through church. 

Felix has never had a friend sleep over before. This is the first time in ages that he’s even had a friend in the house. Why doesn’t he do this more? Hyunjin is delighted over stringing up more cobwebs, and ecstatic to help Jeongyeon with the cider. He is overjoyed to jump out and shout “boo” at the older children, and giggles delightedly at every costume. It injects life into Felix’s home that he had missed. 

It’s weird to see Hyunjin in casual clothes instead of the stuffy button-ups he wears to church. He looks younger in a sweatshirt and shorts handing out candy and sweating while drinking his cider, refusing to sacrifice any authenticity to drink it cool like Felix and Jeongyeon. He’s the jumpiest at the movies, gasping dramatically, looking terrified during “The Haunting,” the one from the 60s that could barely make Felix flinch. 

They play Mario Party and Felix wins and Jeongyeon didn’t even have to let him this time. Hyunjin likes it a lot. Kids stop coming to the door, and Hyunjin and Felix move and play Mario Kart on Felix’s and Jeongyeon’s DS under Felix’s bed. It’s a tall bed, so it barely hurts their necks. 

Hyunjin and Felix sleep shoeboxed in Felix’s bed and in the morning Felix sits in the car in his pajamas as his dad drives Hyunjin home. Hyunjin’s house is huge and his lawn is empty. 

“You should have Hyunjin over more. He seems like a good kid.” The ‘unlike Chris’ goes unsaid but Felix still hears it. He doesn’t want to have Chris over anyway. 

-

Felix isn’t allowed to return to the creek until two weeks _after_ his official grounding is over. When he does, he feels triumphant, splashing through the creek to their hide out. Chris is waiting, he’s playing a guitar, a real one, and his eyes are closed but he’s _there_ and he _waited_. Felix could sing. He calls out Chris's name and his voice cracks. Felix is changing too, and Chris is still here. 

They don’t go so far, not all the time. There’s plenty to catch up with right here. 

-

Jeongyeon gets into her first choice college. It’s across the continent. Felix is going to miss her so much and he hates this, hates that she’s going, that he has to do this, has to do everything that comes next, alone. Their foyer is filling slowly with things, comforters and bedding, cork boards, laundry bags and a shower caddy all in matching aquamarine blue. Felix always thought peach was Jeongyeon’s favorite color. 

“It is, but my roommate and I decided to get everything in aquamarine so they matched.”

“When I go to college I’m not gonna match all my stuff to my roommates favorite color.” 

He mum speaks up: “You won’t, Felix. Boys generally don’t decorate their rooms together.” 

“Good.” He means it but it also sort of stings that the option was taken away from him, if he ever had it. 

“Will you decorate your room at college?” Felix asks Chris in the creek the next day. 

“If I go. I might just travel, get a job and then travel, go to a new place, get another shitty job, until I can afford to go to a new place and get a new shitty job again.” Felix doesn’t ask if he can come. 

“Why not get a nice job and then move?”

“Because it’s so much harder to leave something nice.” And Chris wants to leave. 

-

Jeongyeon finds him under his bed. He’s going to be fourteen next year. His mother has already said he’s too old for this. He’ll stop soon. Once he turns fourteen he’ll stop doing this but for now, in his last few months of being thirteen, he savors the time under his bed. It reminds him of sitting under the ledge in their hideout, shady, a little hidden from view, light not too bright. Felix can’t think if there’s too much light. It distracts him, confuses him. He’s convinced he can feel himself burning. He’s more comfortable in the shade of trees out of the view of direct light. 

He never uses the overhead light in his room. His mum doesn't fight it. He knows she still talks to Dr. Greene, even if Jeongyeon and Felix haven’t for five years, so maybe that’s why. She puts a stained glass lamp in his room - the one from the family room - and he feels better using that, with his room bathed in soft greens and oranges and reds, almost like light reflecting off the creek. Almost. 

Jeongyeon finds him under his bed, light from his lamp bleeding into the space so he can work on homework. He puts it aside when Jeongyeon joins him, her back against the wall next to him, her eyes facing forward. She hands him a box. 

“I didn’t get you anything.” She laughs. 

“It’s not a new present, just something for you to have while I'm away.” Something for Felix to have. It’s an oil diffuser. He’ll figure out how it works later, he remembers it from her room, smelling like orange and mint sometimes. 

“Thank you.” Felix stares forward, at his carpet, at his toes. “You won’t be back until Christmas?” 

“Yeah.”

“Is it because of Jisung?” She doesn’t say anything. “Should I hate him too?” She shakes her head. 

“No. Don’t hate him unless you mean it. Don’t hate anyone unless you mean it.” 

“Do you hate him?” 

“So much. But I also love him so much. And by the time Christmas comes I’ll be ready. To see him. I promise.” 

“What did he do?” 

Jeongyeon lets out a wet gasp. 

“You don’t know?” 

“It’s fuzzy. I just remember the possum.” 

“He thought he was helping, trying to help, and to protect me but. He wasn’t, he-” She cuts herself off, it looks like it causes her great pain to stop herself. She bites her lip and looks at Felix, she does not hug him, she does not squeeze his hand, she does not smile. “He’s coming home soon, and he’s better. You have to love him.” 

-

Jisung is coming home in April, in time for Easter; his mum buys them each new button-down shirts for mass. Until he’s not. It’s pushed back another month. And then another month. And then another month. Felix’s mum stops planning things. His room remains prepared and untouched: the picture frame, Felix, Jisung and Jeongyeon, from when Felix was a toddler, collects dust on Jisung’s bedside table. 

Felix isn’t home when his brother comes back.

He’s at the creek with Chris, drawing, painting on Chris’s arm with pigment, tracing swirls brushing over each tendon of his arm while Chris sings songs Felix doesn’t know. They’ve done this every day of winter break. The pigments stain Chris’s tan skin light blue in some places, yellow ish in others. It will get washed off in time for the start of third term. 

There's a van pulling out of Felix’s driveway when he rounds the corner. He runs home, his backpack hitting against his back; he recognizes the van’s logo from the stationary of his letters. He bursts through the door, and his mother and father are in the living room, leaning against each other talking to someone with their back turned, one big suitcase on the floor. 

Felix’s mother’s eyes meet his and she smiles even wider, “Felix, look who's here.” 

Felix knows, he _knows_ , but he still holds his breath, the figure turns and it’s unmistakably his brother. He has lost some of his cheeks, but not much, the same cheeks as his mother. Felix looks more like his grandma on his father's side, but Jisung, his brother, looks like his mum. Big brown eyes, soft cheeks, but different. Taller, not as tall as their dad but taller than his mum, taller than Felix. He’s pale, paler than his parents, years paler than Felix and thinner. He so thin it makes him look taller. His eyes widen at Felix, his mouth splitting open in a grin that shows his gums. 

“Jisung?” Felix asks cautiously. A spooked animal, but Jisung smiles wider. If he’s an animal he isn’t a scared one. Jisung’s lips crack apart as he smiles. He steps closer - three steps and he’s pulling Felix into a bone-crushing hug. Every part of Jisung is sharp. Felix hugs back. He can see his mother gasp, his father looks shocked. His mother might be crying. He gets the sense Jisung didn’t hug them. 

“Felix, I’ve missed you so much.” The words are dripping with something shaky and fragile, like the slanted quick handwriting from all his letters. Felix hugs him tighter. His brother is home. 

-

“Where are you going?” Felix clutches his chest breathing rapidly in the doorway. 

“You scared me!” 

“Sorry,” Jisung steps forward, out from the basement stairs into the kitchen, “Where are you going?”

“To the creek.” He fiddles with his backpack straps. 

“With Chris?” Felix stiffens for a moment, he forgot he told Jisung about that.

“Yeah. We usually meet about now.” Something flashes across Jisung face, something Felix doesn’t understand, then something hopeful before something flat again, except flat for Jisung’s face is something much different for others. For a moment Felix thinks Jisung might ask to join him but instead he just smiles. 

“Have fun, be safe.” Felix smiles back and opens the door. 

“Thanks! See you for dinner!” 

-

Jisung isn’t very good at video games, but his school is online at home so he has more time than Felix to practice. Felix comes home from school, gets snacks from the kitchen, and pauses at the door to the basement. He knocks, tip, tap, tippity, tap, and Jisung will tell him, “Go ahead!” And then with an arm full of snacks Felix will descend the stairs. They’re narrow - his small feet barely fit - and the toes of his dad’s shoes hang off a bit. 

Their basement isn’t finished per se, since the floor is still concrete and the air conditioning unit is attached to a window and not connected to the one in the rest of the house. Jisung keeps it so cold sometimes Felix runs upstairs for a sweatshirt halfway through.

Even if it’s not finished Felix’s mum made an effort: there are large area rugs from TK Maxx and lamps scattered throughout to add the illusion of light to the space. Still, the place smells like a basement, a little stale and damp, even when the small windows close to the ceiling are open. There's a loveseat in front of the old TV Felix helped his dad carry down the stairs and put on top of a small table. Felix put his Xbox and Wii down here before Jisung got here. He can still play the DS his aunt got him in his room anyway. 

Jisung isn’t very good at video games, but he’s getting better. He’s stuck on a Portal level, one of the first levels with the suspension beams, and he’s made Felix promise not to tell him any of the answers. He doesn’t rage. Felix shouts, quick shouts of annoyance, and Jeongyeon raged properly, throwing a controller once and then immediately diving after it to make sure it was okay. Jisung doesn’t rage, he dies and dies and dies and reloads at save point far back to work his way forward agonizingly slowly only to die again.

He knows now where he needs to go; he’s standing on the platform and knows exactly the buttons to press to get there. He’s solved the puzzle but he just can’t execute it. He dies. He isn’t very good at video games; his hands grip the controller awkwardly, his thumbs are unsteady on the joystick and he routinely accidentally presses the wrong bumper. His hands are speaking a foreign language that his brain has already mastered. Jisung gets the farthest yet, one jump and he wins. His finger slips, he misses the window, he dies. He doesn’t rage, his face is completely passive, “Oh,” but Felix looks down, at the way his knuckles are white and his fingers strained as he grips the controller so tight. Like he can squeeze the life from it. 

“This level’s really hard, it took me forever.” Jisung looks at him and he smiles, and if Felix hadn’t seen his fingers he wouldn’t even know he’s frustrated. 

“We’ll beat it eventually.” Felix smiles back, and brings his knees to his chest. 

-

He has less time to hangout with his friends afterschool now. They don’t go to the basketball courts anymore. Now they go to Yeji’s house or Jaemin’s. Jaemin has a back house on his property with a pool table and videogames and couches and a coffee table where Felix can draw or do homework. But he goes less and less; he feels weird to see them when he knows Jisung is home. Jisung who takes online classes, and doesn’t have any friends and doesn’t leave the house everyday. So Felix stops seeing his friends outside of school so much, he still sits with them at lunch. One day Jaemin asks. 

“Where have you been?” 

“My brother was sick and now he's home…” Felix flounders and Jeno picks up the slack. 

“So you’re stuck with family time?” He asks it kindly. Jeno likes Felix’s drawings.

“Yeah, sorry.” He says, but it isn’t quite right. He hangs out with them on Friday to make up for it, but it’s already different, he’s missed the conception of a new inside joke, and he sucks at Yeji’s newest video game. He’s not allowed to play violent games at home; Portal didn’t prepare him for this kind of aiming. He passes the controller to Chenle easily, he looks like he’s itching for it. 

He sits at the coffee table and watches, sketches in his notebook, wonders what Jisung is doing. Is he playing without Felix? Is he with their parents? Someone runs a hand in front of his face and says "Earth to Felix!" and he snaps out of it, laughs with them. Chenle is really good at the game. He maneuvers Felix's character effortlessly around the map. Sometimes the gunshots make Felix flinch. He blames the surround sound.

He draws Jeno again. It's easy. It's not like drawing Chris. Chris's face is a challenge that Felix completes frequently but it's a challenge nonetheless. It can look so different depending on the angle or time of day, the planes of his face seemingly completely shifting from moment to moment. Jeno's face doesn't do that. He's handsome but it's like Felix's hand can auto-fill his features. It's sort of fun, because then he can have fun with it, this caricature of Jeno he's crafted. He draws this Jeno in the SWAT team outfit of the video game character, big gun pointing right at the view. Jeno is enamored. Everyone else? Not so much.

Jaemin and Yeji and Chenle and the rest swirl around him easily, not paying him any mind, and eventually even Jeno is called over to do something else. Felix thinks about Jisung. He tries to draw him - Jisung might like that as a gift - but he can't picture him right. Even though he's been home for almost a month Felix still struggles to create an image of him in his mind. He gives up.

He starts thinking of Chris instead. It's Friday. A familiar hum thrums in him: _tomorrow._ He gets to see Chris and the hide-out; tomorrow he can let go. Chris and him sometimes see each other in school more, even almost a year after Felix's grounding. They have secret meetings in abandoned stairwells and hallways, behind half walls people seem to have forgotten. Even after Felix was done being punished, Chris and him still meet up in school. Felix passes him doodles done on small scraps of paper: a teacher mid-lecture, a jock with his tongue out, a girl furiously scribbling notes, in a cave of her own long hair. They’re little gifts that Chris takes and looks at with a small smile; he’s not as enamoured with watching Felix draw as when they were little, but he still pays special attention to each one, appraises it, and sometimes asks questions.

Chris has taught him that attention is a special gift, one he doesn’t get from his birth parents, one that he doesn’t give out easily. Chris gets bored. He doesn’t listen to teachers unless they _earn_ it, unless they _deserve_ it, and it’s something Felix cannot comprehend. He talks back to teachers and questions them in a way that makes Felix shudder just at the memory. He does well in some classes, and doesn’t in others even though he’s smart, even though he’s capable, even though he understands. Felix listens, Felix listens and he still doesn’t understand everything. About Chris. And Geometry.

Chenle hands him a soda and tries to teach him the controls again. He’s hopeless. 

-

Jisung approaches church like he approaches most things: from all angles, and with a patience and devotion Felix doesn’t understand. Jisung’s dull eyes seem to sharpen and focus like the aperture on a camera, opening to let in more light. He doesn’t open his bible; he holds it pressed tightly, sharp corners digging into the soft flesh of his stomach even through his button up, leaving creases and wrinkles in the starched fabric. He mumbles the words with the pastor and his jaw see-saws repeatedly as he processes every part of the sermon, and he sings along with something unconscious, not mumbling the words along with the rest of the congregation but articulating each one with care. 

He doesn’t always agree with the pastor. He does always agree with the book. Felix sits with Hyunjin’s family sometimes, in a different pew, closer to the back and the left, but Hyunjin and him don’t spend time folding pamphlets anymore. Instead they make _meaningful eye contact_ that Felix doesn’t know the meaning of but he knows when to make it. Like hieroglyphologists that know how and when to write a rune but don’t know what it means. Felix feels this way more than he cares to admit.

-

Felix is bad at science. He always forgets to label his measurements with units, always gets points off for mixing up the concepts. They’re all theories or laws and they mix in a jumble in his head that comes out in a way that sounds a lot more like guesses than hypotheses, which his teachers promise him are different. He’ll figure it out, because he does the work, and he works the problems, and he approaches them the same way he captures salamanders in the woods, coming from all angles. 

Tip tap tippity tap. Felix looks up. It’s Jisung, he knows it’s Jisung before he sees him but it's Jisung, standing in his doorway, bony knuckles resting against the doorframe. Jisung has bony knuckles that protrude slightly from his hand but his fingers still hold fat in the space between his knuckles where his fingers bend. Jisung likes to hold Felix’s hands, extend and curl Felix’s fingers, something to do with his hands. The bed barely dips when Jisung sits down, but Felix offers his non-dominant hand readily. If it were someone else, their mum maybe, or his sister, Felix might ask ‘what’s up?’ but it’s Jisung, and Jisung is patient and steady. He will tell Felix, he just has to wait. 

Jisung frowns when Felix’s fingers pop with the motion. He pets the finger placatingly, but with too much force accidentally, it pops again. Felix doesn’t mind, it doesn’t really hurt. Jisung pets the finger again, lighter. 

“Our birthday is coming up.” Not Jisung’s, not Felix’s, theirs. 

“Our?” 

“Yeah. We should do something together.”

“What do you want to do?” 

“Take me to the creek?” His teeth are close together when he smiles, the way the waistband of Felix’s sweatpants bunch when he pulls the drawstring, collapsing against each other. Felix doesn’t need braces. 

Felix wonders what Jisung’s face will look like if he lets him down. 

“Okay.” Felix doesn’t have to find out. 

He takes Jisung to the creek, but not his creek. He won’t show him the hideout, he can’t. Where Felix would go left to walk to their hideout, he goes right. He goes up the creek, he doesn’t hop over the logs or veer any direction. He still knows his way, though, since there’s no part of the creek that Felix can’t navigate with ease. 

Jisung has to go slow, and it’s clear to Felix that he doesn’t want to. Felix has to slow his stride for Jisung to follow, so Jisung can try and replicate the easy steps Felix takes from rock to rock, dodging the outsticking branches that try to snag on his clothes, and the unsteady rocks that will surely result in a wipeout. 

Jisung doesn’t take off his shoes like Felix does. Instead he wears Keens, and doesn’t seem to care that the branches snag on his shirt, or that the brambles stick to his gym shorts. He does this too with a determination Felix respects but can’t relate to. It’s like when Jisung decides he’s going to do something, he can just throw the rest of the world. The distractions, the sounds, the stimuli: it all just stops for him. Even if the stimulus is a cut from a branch on his shoulder, dotting his green shirt brown and red with blood. 

Felix has never been able to do that, to turn anything off. It’s like all times Felix is aware of every sensation around him, and it’s only when that awareness becomes a benefit and not something holding him back that he can get anything done. It’s like he can only work on his homework when the fan is going and he can hear his dad listening to the sports radio in the kitchen while he cooks and he’s zipping the pockets of his jacket up down up down with his non dominant hand and humming along to the tinny music from his mp3 player. When Felix is in the creek it feels less like a distraction because everything in his environment is in conversation with each other and he isn’t _supposed_ to be blocking any of it out. 

Maybe Jisung likes the creek, maybe he doesn't. Felix isn’t quite sure; Jisung’s expression stays the same, his mouth in that determined grin that slips to a grimace each time he stumbles or has to take a break in his walking. At the third break he tells Felix:

“At the program we had exercise for one hour twice a week.” Jisung says this while breathing hard, and in his head Felix nixes the plan in his head to lead Jisung up a particularly steep climb to show him the tree that looked like a three headed snake. 

“What did they have you do for exercise?” Felix asks when they start walking again, this time at a slower pace. 

“We had to do a routine with everyone else: jumping jacks, sit ups, push ups, stretching. The rest of the time we had to do what we wanted in the yard.” 

“Like recess?” Felix asks and Jisung smiles where he watches his own feet move across the rocks. 

“Sort of, but we all wore the same blue sweatsuits.” Huh, Felix supposes that’s not too different from his own gym uniform. “Jeongin and I liked to spend the time rolling a ball back and forth.” 

That seems like a lot of time to roll a ball.

“Jeongin was the one you wrote to me about right? The one that reminded you of me.” 

Jisung nods, “He was a little younger I think, but I used to think of him like you. But maybe he wasn’t as nice, and not as…” Jisung trails off, and somewhere in his search for words his eyes meet Felix’s. “Sweet.”

Felix’s mum used to call him that alot, her sweet boy. 

Suddenly, Felix has a flashbulb memory of being very young. He was wearing the kind of fancy outfit that must have meant a holiday, maybe Easter, and he was sitting with an also very young Jisung on a little bench. Felix’s mum was taking photos of them, and Jeongyeon was on their dad’s shoulders. Jisung was shaking him, trying to make him pay attention to the camera but he was shaking him so hard he kept getting distracted. Finally they settled down, two brothers on a little grey bench and his mum’s voice behind the disposable kodak, “my sweet boys.” 

And then Felix remembers that it wasn’t Easter, because he’s seen that photo in the tin at the bottom of his mum’s closet. It was their great-uncle's funeral.

“Do you miss him?” Felix asks after a minute or two, somewhere farther up stream that Felix is tempted to make their stopping point, their turn-around point.

Jisung laughs, full-bellied like Felix has told a hilarious joke and Felix laughs with him. Because it’s easy. 

“Why would I miss him when I have you! When I’m home!” 

Felix wonders if Jeongin has gone home or if he's still in his blue uniform twice a week. 

-

Felix is pulled aside in the hallway, which isn’t surprising. Chris isn’t the one that pulled him aside, though, which _is_ surprising. He doesn’t think Jeno will kiss him but he can’t say he would be mad about it. 

Jeno’s face isn’t serious, because his resting face is one that is very serious, and he doesn’t look neutral. Instead his eyes are wide and his brows are furrowed in a way that Felix has learned from TV means concern and urgency. 

“Felix I’m not sure you should sit with everyone at lunch.” He sounds like he is sure. 

“What? Why?” These are Felix’s friends, he draws them and they tell him gossip and he has always sat with them. 

Jeno pulls a face like he was hoping Felix wouldn’t ask, which seems ridiculous because Felix is nice, he’s always been nice, but that doesn’t mean he would just give up without asking a question or two. 

“Look, I didn’t say anything because you know how they get-” Felix doesn’t know, “but well, Chenle found something and then Yeji heard something from her older sister and it’s about your brother.” 

Felix thinks back to the possum, how it was much bigger in his memory than the ones he saw dead in the streets as roadkill. How it floated. 

“What do they know?” Jeno looks embarrassed and for a moment Felix thinks Jeno must be embarrassed of their friends. 

“Why didn’t you tell us that he was, you know,” and then Felix realizes that Jeno is embarrassed to be having this conversation, that he’s embarrassed for Felix, and he flushes red hot with shame. 

“What? That he was what?”

“That he was…” Jeno loses his words, Felix knows that whatever Jeno is about to say is likely much nicer than what he heard their friends say. “Weird.” 

“I said he was sick,” Felix says back in a quiet voice. The bell rings, four descending electronic tones that mark the beginning of lunch and the end of the passing period and the hall begins to empty out. Students head to the cafeteria or to the courtyard or, like Chris, to the soccer field. 

Jeno shakes his head a little. “I just wanted to warn you that lunch might be a bad idea.” 

It is a bad idea, but Felix wants to know. 

Chenle shows him a print out of a scan of a short article written in the paper. It’s not the local paper for their town, but the bigger paper of their region, the one that is tossed in front of the doors of his neighbors each Sunday. The headline is simple, straight to the point; it wouldn’t do very well as clickbait, Felix thinks. 

November Seventh, 2008 - **_2 Injured, 1 Handicapped in Schoolyard Attack_ **

_A_ _recent attack by a youth in the northwest region raises questions about the line between bullying and brutalization._

The article continues from there. They can’t name names except for the victims. Three young girls, all twelve or thirteen, brutally attacked by the younger sibling of a friend for unknown reasons. Police think it’s premeditated. Apparently the older sister of the attacker had been moderately bullied by these former friends and made fun of on Myspace and Facebook. The attacker used crude tools: a garden spade, a PVC pipe, a hammer. One of the girls lost an eye. Another is working to regain enough strength in physical therapy to someday walk again.

The article doesn’t name names but it’s obvious that it’s Jisung, that it’s Jeongyeon, that it’s his family. That it’s Jisung. 

Yeji is talking, shooting her eyes to Felix every few seconds as she says what her sister told her, about an event that happened six years ago to some of the girls who were in the grade above her sister. How the weird girl’s creepy little brother was a freak, like in Halloween, and how he went crazy. 

Felix can’t look up from the paper; he just keeps reading it over and over again. He wonders if in those six years the girl has learned to walk again. He has a feeling that the other hasn’t learned to see.

He can’t look up from the paper and it isn’t until Jaemin pokes his shoulder and he cowers that he realizes they asked him a question. Felix doesn’t ask them to repeat it, he doesn't say sorry or anything at all. He just takes his backpack and the paper and runs.

He runs.

His lunchbox sits open and uneaten at the table.

He runs and he finds one of the corners he’s been kissed in, one of the corners he’s felt special and bright and he crumples to the ground. He crumples the paper similarly. 

He thinks about shoving the crumpled ball of paper into his mouth, but he knows he won’t be able to swallow around it, that it won’t make anyone see or walk or get rid of the fact that it happened and he knows now. Sort of. It won’t get rid of the fact that no one told him. 

Still, he presses the rough paper to his lips when he cries. 

-

Chris has a hurt foot. It’s ironic, maybe, or just a coincidence that it lines up with the start of Chris’s grandma declaring that she can no longer make the trek to the second floor. The creek is postponed but Felix doesn’t mind; it’s not so bad helping Chris carry his grandmother’s things from the master bedroom down to the small study on the first floor that will become her room now. 

The stairs are steep and narrow with no landing in the middle. It’s a miracle she’s lasted this long with just a cane. There's a walker in the corner, but it’s new and she doesn’t use it much, preferring instead her same brown and red cane as always. The walker is there, though, and it will be used. They take the drawers out of the dresser and Felix attempts to lift with his legs and not his back like he remembers his dad saying but he’s not sure he gets it right. 

Still, they get the dresser down, the desk (they end up having to unscrew the top and reassemble it to fit it down the stairs), her mirror, and one of the armchairs by the window. They take the double bed from the guest room because the large bed and frame she and her husband shared was assembled by Chris’s grandfather when they bought the house and she doesn’t think it will fit in the room. 

What was once the master bedroom is left nearly empty, just an oversized bed with a sheet set to collect dust and no quilt. In the corner is Chris’s grandfather's favorite chair, which has already been collecting dust for years.

Felix remembers when Chris’s grandfather died. Felix was ten, and he remembers finding Chris in the creek afterward. Too young in his too-big suit, holding his fancy socks and shoes in one hand with his dress pants rolled up to his thighs. Just standing in the cold water. 

Now Chris is the only occupant of the second floor, and he already seems to love it. After some tea - tea for Felix and Granny, water for Chris - they head upstairs with an ice pack for Chris’s ankle and another cup of tea for Felix. 

Granny doesn’t allow for eating upstairs but she makes an exception for Felix and for tea. Felix thinks it’s because he might be the only person left for her to push tea onto. Chris doesn’t like drinking hot drinks, doesn’t like that they make him sleepy after. 

“What happened to your ankle?” Chris looks up at Felix like he didn’t actually expect him to ask. What is it with people lately not expecting Felix to ask questions?

Chris makes a face, considering. 

“I hurt it jumping a fence.” 

“Why were you jumping a fence?” 

Another considering face. 

“Sana wanted to go swimming, and the pool was closed, we were in a hurry to leave after.” 

A question bubbles out before Felix can stop himself, maybe he is getting too used to asking questions. “Do you kiss her too?” 

Chris smiles. “Are you jealous Felix?” 

“I-” Is Felix jealous, is he really? “No.” 

“Good.” Chris’s good foot nudges against Felix’s socked one, “I don’t. But sometimes Minho and I do.” 

Felix hums and lets his eyes wander around the room: Chris’s sparse decorations, the quilt under them and the second one folded at the end of the bed, the picture on the dresser of Chris and Granny on the day of the funeral, the guitar leaned up against the wall in a corner. 

“Any more questions?” Chris asks with a crooked smile Felix is familiar with.

Felix thinks about asking Chris if he can sit with him at lunch, but decides against it. He shakes his head like he’s shaking off the idea of it, of sitting with Chris and his older friends, what would he say? How does he start that conversation? He still hasn’t told Chris. 

Instead, Felix points to Chris’s ankle and its ice. “What do we do now?” 

Chris looks at Felix the same way he does when he’s going to ask him to hold his bag so he can climb a tree with a rope and throw one end down and pull up their stuff, so Felix can hold down the fort while Chris sets up camp and Felix will join after.

“Now, we kiss.” 

-

Felix eats lunch in the art classroom. Suddenly he doesn’t feel so bad about spending his time after school with Jisung. Well, at least not because he’s letting down his friends.

His mum doesn’t wake up as early as she used to. She sleeps in; in the mornings it’s just Felix and his father before he leaves for work. His father leaves for work early, only around for the first twenty or so minutes of Felix’s awake hours. He can remember a time when mornings were all of them: his mum, Jeongyeon, his father - not Jisung, but the rest. Jeongyeon and his dad had to leave before him. His dad always dropped her off at school on his way to work because her school’s bus route didn’t reach them. 

Now Felix at least knows why she went to a different school. 

In the mornings, until Felix has to leave for the bus stop, it’s just him. Just Felix packing his lunch, mostly snacks when he’s too lazy to make a sandwich. Just Felix eating his toast and drinking orange juice his mother makes from the can on the weekends. Just Felix, and sometimes Jisung who emerges from the basement dressed for the day before Felix goes to school. Jisung likes to ask Felix if he has all his things, and to affectionately tug his ear before Felix leaves. He likes to ask Felix what his friends are like, and Felix likes to lie. Except it’s not a lie when it’s a memory. 

Jeno likes dogs and cats even if he’s allergic to them. 

Chenle likes video games, the kind with guns and only one winner. 

Yeji likes listening to Thai radio programs, even though she can’t understand it all. 

Jaemin likes sleeping in and hanging off people in the hallway. 

Felix eats his lunch that he packed himself in the art classroom. The teacher lets him in. He’s nice and older and draws his wife and daughter a lot, and Felix sits in the same desk he’s sat in for every art class he’s had since entering the school and eats his lunch, listens to music, and draws. The teacher, Mr. Vander, always leaves after ten minutes to get his lunch from the teachers lounge and doesn’t come back until the period is almost over, and Felix gets to play his music out loud. 

He draws Jeongyeon more and more these days, and Chris. It’s November, and he need only wait till Christmas to see her. 

-

Chris’s ankle gets better and they’re able to go back to their hideout. It’s spring proper, so the heat is picking up and with it the humidity. The only respite from it is extreme air-conditioning that’s always blasting in the school and at home, and being submerged in the colder waters where the creek gets deeper. 

This time of year and in summer the shallower waters near their hideout can feel like a warm bath, but deeper, closer to the lake, where the water isn’t so shallow and there’s more tree cover, the water is cold and refreshing. Felix sinks into it and lets out a sigh so relieved Chris can’t help but laugh at him. They soak there, in the cool water that wrinkles their skin and makes their boxers smell like the forest and algae, and talk. 

They escape the heat. 

On the phone Jeongyeon thinks it will be a calm cyclone season. 

-

At the beginning of December, as an early Christmas gift, Felix is given a black eye and a new name. Fag. 

It happens in the cafeteria, which seems predictable. Well, not the cafeteria really; it’s in the small half-room next to the cafeteria with four vending machines (Felix wanted a Mountain Dew, a treat to himself for making it to the end of the week). It’s the same boys who sometimes watch Felix draw in Mr. Vander’s room from the hall. The same boys who like to loudly bang on the door when Felix isn’t paying attention just to laugh when he jumps and clutches his chest.

They’re out of Mountain Dew. Felix buys a Coke Zero instead because he likes the way it makes his teeth feel funny after. The can bumps down and Felix taps the top with his nail when he picks it up the way Jeongyeon always does to stop it from exploding and starts walking back to the art room. 

He didn’t bring his phone; it doesn’t have any games or a touch screen so he left it with his backpack and the rest of his lunch at his usual desk and he regrets it the second he realizes three of them are following him. Not because he would call anyone, he isn’t thinking of that, not yet, he just wants something to do with his hands. 

He has something to do with his hands a moment later: guard his face. 

When he can he runs, he’s fast and usually he’s surefooted, but this isn’t the creek and he’s wearing his school shoes and it makes his steps unsteady. When one of them throws their backpack at the back of his knee with surprising aim Felix goes down. Hard. 

He catches himself on his hands and knees on the linoleum. He knows when he turns on his ass to face them, him on the ground and them standing, that any teacher that will try to break this up will be too late. 

He only stops guarding his face after two kicks to the stomach have him grasping it with a whimper. He kicks wildly and connects with something, someone curses, suddenly he’s being held down. 

“Fucking faggot.”

Felix had religion class with the boy he thinks. And the one holding down his left leg is a year older, but Felix knows he’s on the Rugby team. He doesn’t know the boy holding down his right leg, one of those boys in his grade that Felix has seen around, seen in the halls and at school assemblies but never learned his name or had a class with him, it's possible at a big school like this. It’s a shame he doesn’t know the names of two boys who are holding him down. 

He knows the boy pulling his fist back is named Devin. 

He knows Devin has a little sister in the art club. She likes reading manga, and drawing her friends in the main characters outfits. Last week he showed her how to draw the ripples in shirts from movement.

“Please, Devin I-” The punch comes to his left eye and cheek and makes his head bounce on the linoleum. 

His eyes are already closed when Devin spits on him. 

“Fag.”

He wonders if Devin saw Felix being kissed in the dark corners of the halls, the corners that might not be dark enough. He knows why he’s being hit and not Chris. He wonders if Devin is jealous. 

He wonders if he's concussed. 

-

It’s not that Jisung is very strong, but that he’s scrappy and won’t stop squirming that Felix’s parents are having a hard time restraining him. They each have an arm, and his mum has hooked her ankle around the doorway to the kitchen so Jisung can’t destabilize her so much. 

Felix thinks it’s the most he’s seen Jisung touch their parents at once since he’s come home. 

Jisung is kicking and spitting and won’t stop trying to wrench his arms from their parent’s grip. He’s not shouting really, just grunting and struggling. 

“Let me GO!” he says and Felix watches their dad grit his teeth and their mum, obviously struggling, speak up. 

“Jisung calm down, it’s okay-” 

“It’s not!” Jisung cuts her off and he swings his leg back to kick their dad in the leg in a way that makes him grunt and stagger, and that is enough to make Felix move. 

Felix strides forward and locks eyes with Jisung, who stops kicking so fiercely at Felix’s approach. Felix doesn’t know what to do besides beg. All he knows is that he _needs_ Jisung to calm down. He needs him to see that Felix is fine before something happens, Felix puts his hands on Jisung’s shoulders and tries to speak as calmly as he can, even though he knows it still comes out frantic. 

“Jisung, Jisung, look at me I’m fine. I’m fine Jisung.” 

“You’re NOT fine, your face-” 

“Has a bruise that will fade. In a week or two I will be back to normal, and I can see just fine.” 

“They _hurt_ you Felix, they _hurt_ you and-” Suddenly an image of Devin’s little sister flashes in Felix’s mind. Of the girls in the paper. Girls whose names he isn’t sure he can remember.

“Jisung, it’s okay-” 

“What are their names?! I want to know their names!” Nevermind that Felix didn’t know two of their names until Chris whispered them like a curse. Felix can only think of the headline, of the way Jeongyeon’s voice shook with anger and fear, of the fact that the names of the girls six years ago feels so much more important than the names of the boys who held him down.

“It’s okay Jisung, they got suspended and,” Felix takes a breath and hopes that his parents won’t say anything, “and Chris already punched one of them back.”

Jisung pauses and stops struggling, so suddenly that their parents aren’t ready for it and Jisung’s limp body jerks again in their hold from the force of them yanking him back. 

“One of them?” Jisung asks, his jaw working, chewing each of the words Felix knows he won’t say. Felix’s dad is relaxing and Felix wants to tell him that they aren’t in the clear yet but he _can’t_. Instead, Felix moves his hands to the side of Jisung’s neck gently, trying to make sure he won’t look anywhere but at Felix. 

Felix tries to block out the image of Chris’ jab, and the ruthless hammerfist he had used next without even letting Devin recover.

“One of them, the one who hit me. And that has to be it, and you have to promise me you won’t go after them because Jisung, Chris got detention for two weeks, but I’m scared that if you do something- I’m scared that if you do something, since you aren’t a student at my school, that they’ll take you away from me again.” 

Felix can see both of his parents tense on the edges of his vision but he keeps his attention on Jisung. 

“I don’t want to lose my big brother again,” Felix says and it’s true, he wants Jisung to stay right here where Felix can look at him and play video games with him and make sure he’s okay that he isn’t hurting anyone. “You’ll stay with us, Jisung, right?” 

“They _hurt_ you,” Jisung says again. “My baby brother.” 

“And Chris took care of it.” Felix knows what he’s about to say is risky, but he’s out of straws to grasp for. “But what if he can’t take care of it next time Jisung? Then I’m gonna need my big brother, I’m gonna need you to be there.” 

Jisung stares at Felix like he’s searching Felix’s face for something. Felix bites his tongue to fight the urge to add any more desperate pleas. 

Finally, Jisung sags forward until his head thumps against Felix’s in a way that hurts but Felix doesn’t dare cower when Jisung’s eyes are still on his. 

“I’ll be there for you Felix. I’ll always protect you.” 

Their parents let go when Felix moves his hands to lightly push at where they hold onto Jisung’s still scrawny arms, and Jisung wraps Felix in a bone crushing hug. 

Every part of Felix aches; his ribs and stomach are a mottle of bruises much like the one on his face and his spirit feels weak. He feels broken down and battered and exhausted from the fear that raced through him, not just when fists were raining but from the idea of what Jisung could do. But it was okay. He was safe, everyone was safe. Everyone was right there. 

He would walk into church on Sunday with a bruise, a limp, and the congregation's eyes on him, but Jisung would be there, still in his sights. 

-

Felix’s life becomes three things leading up to summer break, a division of time spent in three places with three people. The mornings and after school spent at home with Jisung, who likes to wait at the bus stop for Felix and talk with him as they make their way back to his basement room for more games and chatter. The weekends and some evenings are spent with Hyunjin at church while the dance team prepares for the Christmas showcase. They’re slated to perform in between the men's choir and the Christmas Pageant and afterward if it’s like last year’s they’ll all eat barbecue together outside at picnic tables with red plastic cloth. 

Time at school is spent with Chris. Chris insists that Felix eat dinner with him and his friends underneath the shade of a tree near the end of the field. It’s too hot to be eating outside in Felix’s opinion, but at least the magpies are done with their swooping season so it’s not actually dangerous. Well, besides the threat of heatstroke, but Felix knows better than to let himself get dehydrated in the summer.

No, the heat wasn’t what had scared Felix about sitting with Chris and his friends, it was the second half of the phrase. Chris’s friends. It turns out, they aren’t so scary anymore. Or maybe Felix isn’t quite as desperate for them to like him. Instead Felix eats his lunch and sits next to Chris and he sketches. Minho likes his sketches, and BamBam plays some of the same games Chenle used to so even if Felix doesn’t speak much he at least knows sort of what to say. 

Mostly, Felix just sits, and lets Chris have this. 

The first day Chris had seemed both more tense and more relaxed with Felix eating with him. Felix knew that Chris liked feeling like Felix was safe, and Felix likes it too. He likes knowing that no one is going to jump around a corner when he’s sitting with Chris and his friends. 

Chris relaxes with time, and mostly his friends just seem to forget about Felix which is a relief. For the final days before summer break Felix knows where he belongs. He knows the three contexts where he can make sense of himself. Even if he can’t quite reconcile those contexts with each other, at least he has them, and at least he knows.

-

Summer break technically starts on the fifteenth of December, because that’s when Felix stops having to go to school. For Felix, however, it _officially_ starts on the seventeenth when they pick his sister up from the airport. 

Felix and his dad make the trek to the airport. It’s a bit of a drive - just over an hour with traffic - but Felix can feel himself practically vibrating the whole way with excitement. Jisung and his mom had stayed home to put the final touches on Jeongyeon’s first dinner back but Felix jumped at the opportunity to see his sister first when his father offered it. He missed her. They had always been close, and their age difference made it so that they were never really those siblings that fought a lot, but despite all of this they hadn’t been as good about calling as they promised each other they would be. 

Their calls were infrequent and when they had talked it had been _great_ but holy shit did he miss his sister. 

Felix’s dad lets him off in front of the arrivals gate and starts the process of circling the airport since cars weren’t allowed to idle and parking at their airport was a small fortune. Felix didn’t mind; he was pretty comfortable following the signs and more than excited to be the first face to greet his sister and welcome her home. She was going to be _home_. 

Their first Christmas all together since Felix was seven. 

He sits in the weird almost-leather almost-benches with the other folks waiting for passengers to come down the escalators at the far end of the terminal. The chairs remind Felix of the ones he’s seen at sports arenas but made of a black material that sticks to the back of his knees poking out from his shorts in an uncomfortable way, and the arm rests between each seat are thicker and more circular than rectangular. He can’t get comfortable no matter how many positions he tries, and part of that might be the strange way he sits even given the most normal of chairs but another is the way his legs can’t stop shaking with anticipation. 

The other patrons around him are reading books or magazines or on their phones but Felix can’t tear his eyes away from the escalators. He watches them with rapt attention, staring at each pair of shoes and then legs that emerge and analyzing them trying to see if one could be his big sister. He stands up when he sees a pair of green rain boots that he remembers seeing her in before but then he remembers that she didn’t take them to school, and that he saw them recently in the front hall closet, dusty with neglect. 

He manages to not recognize her until her torso comes into view. Her converse and soccer shorts could have made her anyone but the long sleeve tie dyed shirt with the name of her private highschool is unmistakably Jeongyeon’s. 

He’s up and weaving towards her in an instant, dodging travel-weary passengers and exhausted parents dragging hyper or cranky tots, almost tripping over luggage and his own feet in an effort to meet her at the bottom of the escalator. She sees him along the way and is rushing similarly, both of her bags hoisted above her head so she can slip past the travelers below her on the moving stairs, almost falling in her effort to get to him. 

She drops her bags to the ground to sweep him up in a hug and Felix squeezes her tight, inhaling the scent of stale plane sweat, and in-flight food, and airport and the smell of the same Victoria’s Secret body spray he remembers always seeing on her dresser. 

She’s _home._

Jeongyeon sits in the back with Felix on the way home. Their dad complains that he feels like a chauffeur but neither of them move; it’s a comforting feeling of normalcy to be sitting behind his father in the car next to her. She answers all their dad’s questions about college, yes she’s still getting along with her roommate, yes she thinks she passed all her finals, yes even the final test for her psychology class she had been complaining about all semester, and yes she was happy there and knew to stay safe at any parties with boys. 

She had looked at Felix at that question with a smile in her eyes like Felix was in on the joke. 

She doesn’t ask any questions about the yellowing bruise on his face and he wonders if their mom asked her not to.

As is often the case the drive back feels hours shorter than the drive to the airport, and in what felt like minutes their dad was performing the K turn to park the car in its usual spot in the driveway. There's a silent moment in the car, and Felix knows everyone is thinking the same thing. Moment of truth. 

Felix and his dad carry her bags and Jeongyeon walks in between them, Felix bringing up the rear. Felix closes the door and has the positioning of the moment his siblings reunite. Their father had yelled their arrival - “We're home!” - and Felix swears everything else happens in slow motion. 

Jeongyeon stiffens when Jisung comes out of the kitchen before their mom and only stiffens further when their mom, instead of rushing forward to hug her only daughter, stands behind Jisung, lending support as he takes a shaky breath and bends past ninety degrees in a bow.

His hair flops over, it’s getting long and shaggy and he never puts any product in it, and so it fwumps over his head and makes a small curtain round his head from which his words emerge, muffled from the hair and angle. 

“Welcome home Jeongyeon, I hope this can be the start of a new chapter as your little brother, I promise to be a better brother who is sensitive to your needs and comfort level. I hope to show you I’ve changed.” 

It’s very formal, stilted but kind, but Felix can’t help but compare it to the bone crushing hug Jisung had greeted Felix with.

Jeongyeon is still frozen, her hand loosely grasping her phone like she had been the whole journey home. She takes a single step towards him and moves to take another but aborts it halfway when he stands up, like she can’t walk towards him when she can see his face.

Their hair looks the same, and their cheeks, and that’s all Felix can think still standing in the doorway watching them across from one another. 

Jeongyeon nods, swallowing, and then nods harder. 

Finally she speaks in a quiet voice: “Thank you Jisung. I look forward to it.” 

When she rushes off to her room, their dad stops Felix from following her, motioning for their mom to instead. 

Felix lets Jisung play with his hand as they wait at the dinner table for them to join them. 

-

Christmas passes like Jisungs first declaration: stilted, formal, but fine. Jeongyeon spends time in the same spot at the end of Felix’s bed that Jisung frequents but not at the same time. It makes Felix feel kind of like a sick person in the hospital with visitors, despite being well and just liking to sleep in and play DS and avoid the summer heat when he can.  
Unless he’s in the creek swimming with Chris. That's a nice thing about the creek, about time with Chris. There are no visitors, there are no interruptions. It’s just them, the air, the trees, and the water. 

A few days after the longest hottest day, it’s Christmas. The mass is held inside the air-conditioned Church in three separate options. Their family likes to go to the midnight mass on Christmas Eve, they always have, because their mom likes the music the best at that one but there's also the option of an afternoon service on Christmas Eve and the morning service on Christmas proper. 

For them their schedule begins with the festivities in the afternoon and evening on Christmas Eve. The choirs perform and the Church leadership announce the volunteer projects for the upcoming year and Felix sweats behind the stage with the other dance team members and Hyunjin in their matching red and gold t-shirts waiting to take the stage. 

The performance goes well. Felix finds himself thinking that if this was a real performance, the type that's done inside in an auditorium or theater with fancy lights, he wouldn’t be able to see the audience. The lights would shine in his eyes and he wouldn’t be able to see the pinched expression of the choir leader or the jovial grin of their pastor at their pops and locks. He wouldn’t be able to see his family sitting in the third row on the left. 

As it is, they are outside on a small half stage and he can see his family, sitting right to left: Jisung, his mother, his father, and Jeongyeon. There's a spot next to Jisung where Felix will be expected to sit when they get off the stage to watch the Christmas Pageant. There's a picture somewhere of baby Felix, less than a year old swaddled in brown cloth in the arms of a girl who can’t be more than ten years old, playing baby Jesus to her Mary in the Christmas Pageant. 

Felix sits through the pageant and dinner and Midnight Mass with dried sweat on his back and Jisung at his side the whole night. Insects buzz with the father's sermon, and swell with the choir of “O Holy Night,” and Jisung has to pinch the meat of Felix’s thumb with his sharp little nails to keep Felix from falling asleep. 

-

Felix gets two sketchbooks, a new pair of jorts, and a brand new phone with a touch screen and access to the app store. It’s hard for Felix to focus on anything else after the phone; it has _apps_ and Felix can download them and play the games everyone was talking about last year. While everyone else finishes unwrapping their gifts and eating Christmas breakfast Felix is preoccupied giddily setting up his phone (it has a passcode!) and thinking about when he can sneak off to show Chris. 

Chris has been complaining about Felix’s old phone for ages. It could barely manage taking and sending photos and it took Felix ages to text on his old keyboard. 

The holiday has even Felix’s dad in a good mood and he lets Felix slip away from the breakfast dishes with a fond shake of his head and ruffle of Felix’s hair in return for a promise to be home before dinner. 

Felix skips to Chris’s grandmother’s house in his brand new jorts and with his brand new phone and same old smile to get to see Chris. Chris has a new guitar and travel books and a matching smile. It’s a good day, a perfect afternoon to lie on the bed in Chris’s air-conditioned room and play mobile games together and trade kisses. Chris even takes a picture of Felix kissing his cheek and jokes about making it his background. He doesn’t.

Felix comes home well before dinner and long before dark because Chris’s Grandma wants them to go to a show in the city; a friend sent her tickets and she likes to leave with lots of extra time to park. Now that Chris has his license he has to drive his grandmother all sorts of places. She can still technically drive but she hates it, almost as much as Chris himself hates it, but she’s old and frail (or at least she says she is) so now the responsibility falls on Chris. 

Felix has tried to get Chris to drive him places before but he hates it and almost never agrees. When he does drive it’s with his shoulders hunched up to his ears and his nose barely an inch away from the top of the wheel with how far he leans forward. Felix doesn’t mind, since everywhere he wants to go with Chris is within walking distance. 

Jisung’s the same age but he hasn’t bothered to learn. Felix can’t relate, he can’t wait to learn.

Felix gets home before anyone expects him to, and he knows because while he’s walking around the side of the house to get to the door near the kitchen he overhears a conversation drifting down the cracked window of his parents room that he definitely isn’t supposed to. Felix used to not make it his business what the other members of his house say behind closed doors; he would put on his head phones when his parents fought in another room and left the room when Jeongyeon would say something particularly barbed towards their father. And then his parents hit him. And then he found out the real reason Jisung had to leave. Now he doesn’t make as much of an effort to turn a blind eye. 

“It’s WEIRD, Mom!” It’s his sister. Obviously. 

“Well, Doll, you ran away. It’s going to be weird, we just gotta push through it.” 

“I didn’t run away, I was at college.” 

Felix remembers his mom and Jeongyeon arguing back when she was thirteen and Felix was young enough to not really know what they were talking about. 

“Oh? You were at college so that was the only reason you didn’t come home during the breaks when all the other moms got to see their kids?” 

There's a pause. Felix hears the sound of someone sitting down on his parents ancient creaky mattress and he tries to imagine if it’s his sister or mom. They have both taught him so much about grace and beauty. And about surrender. 

“Do you blame me?” 

The answer comes immediately: “No.” Another silence before Felix hears his mom's voice again, “I do wish you would try harder sometimes.” 

“He gives me the shivers. It’s like… he’s a fucking psychopath, mom.” 

Felix stills. He isn’t an idiot; he knows what a psychopath is. He’s seen movies. 

“He isn’t.” Again, it’s immediate. Jeongyeon scoffs. Their mother continues at the sound. “He really isn’t, if he was it would be a disorder, something that they actually have treatment and studies on. He has some symptoms of a personality disorder, he has disinterest in the words of most authorities and evaluators but he doesn’t pursue alliance making, or try and get fake sympathy, he doesn’t discredit the pain of others or give fake compliments. There's no intense change in opinions about people, and he doesn’t seem to care too much about what others think of him. He doesn’t have long goals.” 

There's silence. Felix feels much older than he is thinking of what all those words mean, and then he acutely feels his age and situation again. He is wearing jorts and sandals and crouching under a window in the grass he didn’t mow finely enough, and he feels young.

“What about empathy?” 

“What about it?” There's a creak, and Felix imagines his mother sitting next to Jeongyeon on the bed, or standing to talk more on her level, even though Jeongyeon is taller than her. 

“I thought if you didn’t have empathy you were a psychopath.” 

“He does have empathy.” Jeongyeon starts to argue but their mother shuts her down immediately. 

“No, listen, he does have empathy. It isn’t as wide or active as some, but he has it. It’s more selective but he feels it, for Felix especially.” Felix hears his own pulse in his ears while he waits for his mom to keep talking. “And he used to for you. I think he still does.” 

Jeongyeon seems to ignore the last part.

“I don’t like the way he is with Felix. It - I don’t know but I don’t like it.”

His mom sighs a distinctly mom-like sigh, “I don’t always like it either but we need to support it.” 

“Why? Why do we need to just roll over and be okay with everything?” The indignation in her voice reminds Felix of who Jeongyeon used to overwhelmingly be. It felt like for years all his sister was was this girl, this angry girl who fought with their parents and threw controllers. 

“Because his doctors said so!” His mother doesn’t talk like this often, with so much honesty and urgency. “Because his doctors in every report underlined the importance of his connection to his little brother, that talking about and thinking about Felix was a way to convince him to actually try in therapy and share in the group sessions, to actually _want_ to see what he did wrong and get better. Felix is the reason he’s learned to stop, that life is precious, to get better and so we need to trust the doctors and let him have this.”

Felix shouldn’t hear this.

“He is learning to have compassion for others because of him.” 

Felix shouldn’t hear this.

“So you’re willing to sacrifice one son for another?”

Felix doesn’t hear what else Jeongyeon says because he’s opening the side door and letting it slam shut behind him, loud enough that everyone in the house will know he’s home.

-

Normal is a relative term, and one that can be re-established quickly, Felix finds. Jeongyeon goes back to school and the weeks before winter break become his life for a year. Jisung, Chris, Jisung after school, Hyunjin and church and Chris on the weekends. It’s not so bad. In fact, Felix learns that he can be happy in a lot of ways.

Hyunjin and him are appointed assistant dance team leaders which mostly just means catching up members who miss a meeting while the actual leader, Xiao Xiao, teaches new material that she’s already taught to Hyunjin and Felix. Hyunjin and Felix get to have extra meetings with her though which is cool and she even encourages them to contribute tweaks to the choreography which is even cooler. Also, she helped Felix get his front splits which makes him feel powerful in a way he’s never felt before.

Being assistant dance team leaders also means they get a copy of keys to the church rec room and can reserve time in it just for them. At least once a week Hyunjin and Felix meet up outside of dance practice or dance team meetings just to dance and mess around together. They choreograph pieces together to songs that the Church would never endorse and make dances that others won’t ever see and more than once Felix falls to the ground from laughing too hard. 

After they dance, when they’re on the ground stretching or just greedily sucking from their water bottles trying to catch their breath, they’ll talk. Hyunjin has _finally_ made a friend at his Catholic school that he actually likes. In the past Hyunjin’s had friends but the type of friends Hyunjin didn’t hang out with outside of school, and the type of friends Hyunjin complained to Felix about. Now, Hyunjin has a friend, a real one, one that transferred to Hyunjin’s school because he was bullied, but he’s actually cool. Or well, Hyunjin says he’s not cool at all, that he’s lame and cares about the rules a lot but that he's funny and snarky and actually nice to Hyunjin so Hyunjin likes him. His name is Seungmin, and Hyunjin and Felix fantasize about all their friends meeting often but Felix knows to never let it actually happen. 

He knows that sometimes, most of the time really, it’s better to let things be separate. That distance can be good, because it allows people to be different, and trying to reconcile others is harder than reconciling the many sides of yourself. 

Sometimes Felix is still surprised by how brash, how crass Chris can be with his friends at school.

-

Reconciliation happens, but a small one. The next year, a month after Easter, Hyunjin’s parents go on a missionary trip for a week and Hyunjin spends it switching to a different person's house every few nights. He spends one night and two days at Felix’s house and they treat it like a big sleepover. Hyunjin is newly sixteen like Felix will be in September, but his parents still don’t trust him to stay home alone, or spend too much time in one place. They don’t want him to get too comfortable in any house besides his home.

They dig out Mario Kart and Mario Party for old time’s sake and a copy of Just Dance they rented from the library and they play games. Felix tries to get Hyunjin to bake with him but mostly Hyunjin just sits on the counter and talks to Felix as Felix rolls out the dough and fills the center of triangle-shaped cookies with sweet jam. 

They eat dinner and Felix finds himself sitting next to Jisung and across from Hyunjin like he did with Jeongyeon at Christmas. 

Jisung didn’t play video games with them earlier, but he joins after dinner - actually invites them to the basement to play card games and eat sweets. None of them drink; Felix knows that in September Jisung will be able to legally drink but he honestly can’t picture it. He’s pretty sure Chris drinks now. 

They don’t drink, but they still eat ice cream and candy and junk food and stay up too late and somehow the combination of the late hour and the sugar high has Felix feeling delirious and almost drunk. It’s enough to trade secrets with them at least.

At half past two they start playing Never Have I Ever. They have to explain the rules to Jisung but he gets it quickly. Surprisingly it’s Jisung that suggests the punishment, the first one who puts down all ten fingers has to run around the house three times. In just his underwear. 

It starts easy: Felix gets both of them to put a finger down with “Never have I ever driven a car” because Hyunjin has already started his driver ed class and apparently Jisung has driven around an empty parking lot before. 

Hyunjin gets Felix back next with Jisung as a casualty when he says, “Never have I ever had a sibling.” Felix rolls his eyes at the cheap shot but Jisung just grins his gummy smile. 

Jisung pulls off an all kill with “Never have I ever gone to a physical high school,” and they go from there. 

It gets harder and harder as the game goes on, because on paper they are all very similar. They are all Korean teens living outside Korea, they are all guys, they all are christian and they all play video games. It’s hard to get two people out at once after the first time, especially after they outlaw Hyunjin for doing ones that are just about being blood related. 

Hyunjin blows out his cheeks when it’s his turn again. Jisung has five fingers but Felix and Hyunjin are both down to three. 

“I don’t knowwwww I feel like we’re too similarrrrr” He’s at the level of sleepiness of dragging out his consonants and pouting. 

“I’m sure you can think of something,” Jisung says, by far the most put together of the three of them. Jisung had said earlier that he stays up late a lot but Felix can’t figure out why. What does he even do until morning? Read the bible? Ha. Maybe Chris is right and Felix is funny. 

Felix doesn’t have many encouraging words so he smushes his cheek into Hyunjin’s bony shoulder and says with Dorito and sugar breath, “you got this Jinnie!”

Hyunjin looks down at Felix and then looks away blushing. 

“Okay, I uh, got something.” Felix sits back up his proud three fingers at the ready, Hyunjin coughs and says, “Never have I ever kissed anyone.” 

Felix’s jaw drops with his finger, “Never?!” 

“You have?” Hyunjin asks, like Felix is the strange one here and not him. Not that there's anything wrong with being sixteen and not having kissed anyone, Felix isn’t judgemental, it’s just well, Hyunjin is so nice and pretty.

“Yeah, when I was thirteen.” Felix still remembers it, the lake, the pop tarts, Chris. 

Hyunjin turns to Jisung and Felix realizes for the first time Jisung also put a finger down. 

He clears his throat awkwardly, blushing. “I was fifteen when I had mine.”

Wait. Fifteen. Jisung came home when he was fifteen. 

“Did you have it after you came home or before?” Felix can’t remember seeing Jisung with anyone that wasn’t family or one of his doctors since he came home so it must have been-

“No, it was someone at the program.” More blushing. “It was Jeongin, the one I told you about.” Huh. 

“Oh, that’s cool.”

“Was yours Chris?” Hyunjin asks, butting in, and it’s Felix’s turn to blush. 

“Yeah.” Jisung looks away and Felix wonders if he’s getting bored or if he just doesn’t want to hear about his baby brother's first kiss. 

They finish up quickly after that, Hyunjin and Jisung both targeting Felix with their questions and Felix pouting and laughing at their antics. It’s chilly, almost as chilly as it gets for them and Felix shivers when he’s stripped to just his boxers.

Hyunjin and Jisung laugh from the porch at the sight of Felix in just his green boxers and tennis shoes sprinting around in the dark. Felix would probably laugh too if he wasn’t the one running but he still smiles. Hyunjin and Jisung cheer quietly and Hyunjin wraps Felix in a blanket when he finishes. After that they call it a night; Hyunjin and Felix retire to his room and Jisung to his own.

Hyunjin sleeps on Felix’s bed and Felix, like the good host he is, sleeps on the bed his mother made up on the floor with the blow up mattress. Despite being tired, and feeling the crash of his sugar high, and the air mattress being comfortable, sleep still evades Felix. 

He stares at the ceiling in his boxers wrapped in soft blankets, and Felix finds himself thinking about Jeongin. 

He wonders, not for the first time, if Jeongin has gotten to go home. He wonders what put Jeongin in a facility like that to begin with.

And he wonders why his brother kissed him.

In the morning Hyunjin will finally get to go home, his real home, and even though Jisung will stay the same as always, Felix will be left wondering. 

-

Winter comes. Winter goes. The less Felix thinks about his life and everything in it the more normal everything feels. The less Felix thinks the happier he feels.

Felix used to feel so alone, and now he never has to spend a moment alone if he doesn’t want to. 

In the morning before school Felix spends time with Jisung, letting him walk him to the bus. At school Felix’s days are either class or Chris; it’s Chris’s final year and he’s taking a lighter load than a lot of their classmates because of it. It’s unspoken but they both know he won’t be around next year, so instead they spend time not sitting at a desk wrapped up in each other. It’s rare for Felix to leave a class and not see Chris within a minute or two of the bell ringing ready to pull him up to the roof, or a classroom that no one uses anymore because of a broken heater, or out a door with a faulty fire alarm for a few minutes alone together. 

They kiss, but they do a bit more. Not much more though. Mostly they just spend time together, goofing off and ranting about teachers and students. Recently Felix found out Chris doesn’t kiss Minho anymore, or anyone else. They don’t talk about that though, or them, or what they are. They talk about everything else. That’s always what it’s felt like with them, Chris and Felix, Felix and Chris, against the world. 

After school Felix gets picked up from the bus by Jisung, and then he does homework in the basement before dance practice with Hyunjin if they have it. It really is rare for Felix to be alone, enough so that his brain has gotten used to being around people. If he’s alone for too long, like if Jisung has a doctor's appointment while their parents are at work, Felix has to turn on the radio just to trick his brain into thinking people are around or he’ll get anxious. And even if he does, even if the radio is playing and the television is on, he still feels on edge. 

His thoughts get too loud. 

The less Felix thinks the happier he is. 

-

Jeongyeon has an internship that keeps her busy from early in the morning until late at night on top of her classes so calling has been hard, but still she manages to be the first person to wish Felix a happy birthday. The call comes in at four in the morning - it wakes him up actually - Jeongyeon’s warm voice versus his own scratchy morning voice. 

“H-hello?” 

“Happy Birthday! Good morning sunshine!” He can’t help but smile, even if it isn’t even light out yet, even if he only went to bed at midnight.

“Thank you~ Good morning.”

“You sound like death, Felix.” 

“And you sound too chipper, what have you done to my sister!” Her laughter is bubblier and brighter than he can remember hearing it in a while. He’s so relieved. She tells him about her internship, working at a boarding for girls with experiences with trauma, and Felix feels the first smile of his sixteenth year really blooming. She sounds happy, and the girls sound cute, and his sister sounds fulfilled. He’s so happy for her. He’s so proud. 

He tells her as much and she laughs at him again, bright and loud. 

She calls him a sap but continues, “I’m happy too, but you only have to wait till Christmas. I’ll be home then and I’ll tease you mercilessly.” 

“I can’t wait,” Felix says and he really means it. 

-

Felix and Jisung have a joint birthday dinner where the attendance is _very_ exclusive. Very exclusive in that it’s just Felix, Jisung, and Hyunjin, and Jisung and Felix’s parents. Felix and Chris decide to really celebrate together on Chris’s birthday, which Chris - while being pouty about it - seems to understand. 

Their dad barbecues despite the chill, meaning he has to wear one of his thick jumpers while tending to the grill but even he seems happy about it. They aren’t a huge present family but Felix is delighted to get driving lessons at the same place Hyunjin did his, and even Jisung seems excited about the new strategy based board game their parents got him. It seems long and honestly too confusing for Felix’s liking but he and Hyunjin have already agreed to play it with him sometime in the future. 

Jisung seems the most excited, however, by the present Felix got him: a framed photo of their family taken on Christmas last year. Felix is still sweaty from the performance and the hot sun in his red and gold shirt, with a sibling on each side and their parents rounding out the photo. It’s the only picture of their family, their whole family, since years before Jisung had to leave.

Jisung smiles and thrusts his gift towards Felix.

It’s a sketchbook, a big one with thick watercolor paper and beautiful new watercolor paints. Felix smiles. He can’t wait for something new. 

-

For the first time in years Felix didn’t give Chris art for his birthday. No, this year Felix didn’t give him a portrait or picture of them or the creek or their hideout. This year Felix gives him a chain, silver and a nice quality; it cost a good portion of the money Felix made from mowing lawns the last few months but it was worth it. 

The saleswoman at the store promised Felix that his chain, while shiny enough to glint in the light but masculine enough to never sparkle, could handle being showered with and tugged on, and it was the perfect size for Chris to put charms on it. This way, wherever Chris went he could get a small souvenir. 

Felix gives Chris his first one and Chris tears up - not much, but enough for both of them to laugh at - when Felix puts it on him. Felix thought about the pencil, or the paint brush, or the tree but it all felt tacky somehow. Instead, Felix gives Chris a chain with one small pendant, smaller than any of his nails, a silver circle that probably has a name for the technique but to Felix it looks like it’s been pounded by a tiny mallet to give it an uneven but sanded texture. 

Chris gets it immediately. 

“Like the bottom of the creek.” Felix nods. 

“Do you like it?” Chris looks up at Felix, and somehow this feels like the most important gift. 

“Felix, I love it,” Chris says, and pulls him into a hug, the one where Felix ends up half on Chris’s lap just by how close they are, no space left between them. They end up stuck like that for a bit, just holding each other, before Chris remembers his own gift to Felix. 

He pulls it from his backpack, which seems full to the brim with things for them to do, but first he pulls out a blanket. 

Chris makes Felix get up from where he’s comfy half in his lap in the hideout to lay down the blanket and a couple of pillows on the hard slab of rock, and from here Felix can appreciate their little home away from home in the woods. 

It’s no different from when they were little, though it feels a little smaller. Maybe it’s perfect, Felix thinks, like hermit crabs outgrowing their shells before they go off to wherever they go next. For now it still works: they have to squeeze but Felix and Chris have never had any problem with getting close. 

It’s the same rocks, the same overhang and their runes, the stains made of pigments and their own hands, still there. Faded, yes, but there: spirals and jagged lines in red and yellow. 

Chris beckons Felix back down to a moderately more cushioned seat and presents him with his sixteenth birthday present. They laugh first, at their similar thinking, before Chris tries to explain that it’s different actually because his is an anklet. 

It’s a platinum anklet which feels very luxurious and gaudy at the same time, but Chris explains that it shouldn’t rust or oxidize in the water at all and this way Felix can still wear jewelry while he’s barefoot in the creek. Felix puts it on immediately because of course he doesn and he can’t help but splash into the water loving the feel of the cool metal against his skin. The way it floats up and sinks back down against his skin in the water, a little reminder each time. He loves the way it glints just under the water's surface and glides like the scales of a fish reflecting the light. And he loves the look in Chris’ eyes as he watches Felix hop around in the water.

Chris has other surprises, snacks including some of the biggest green grapes Felix has ever seen, Felix’s favorite soda, and the first alcohol Chris can legally buy. He seems to have a small medley. 

It’s a small bottle of white wine, smaller than the ones his mom buys, a bottle of beer and a four-pack of alcoholic seltzers. Felix raises his eyebrows at it, but Chris just laughs and promises, “I won’t drink all of it, it’s really just to try,” and then sheepishly a moment later, “I mostly just got excited that I could legally purchase it.” 

He starts with the beer and hums as he sips, and Felix gladly drinks the Fresca that none of the vending machines at school carry, and listens to Chris tell him about what his Grandma got him for his entry into adulthood and the weird letter from his parents. Chris made a playlist just for the day and it’s playing from tinny phone speakers that always echo weirdly off the slabs of rock in the hideout but Felix likes to think that adds to ambiance. The collection of rocks isolate them just enough that the sound reflects back at them like a warm echo and the sounds of everything else outside are muted. 

Felix tries a sip of the beer and it’s so foul he makes a face that has Chris laughing for a minute straight. Felix makes Chris kiss the taste off his tongue as an apology. 

The day continues, and Chris keeps drinking and they keep kissing and the songs keep going. Felix can’t help but wiggle a little in Chris’s lap to the beat and sigh into the kiss. Why didn’t they do this earlier? The pillows must actually help, because Chris hasn’t made them stop and stand yet because of his butt or back. Or maybe that's the alcohol. 

It makes Chris’s breath a little more sharp, a little more biting when he licks into Felix’s mouth and sucks on his bottom lip. 

“How does it feel to be eighteen?”

Chris answers the question with one of his own and a grin, “How does it feel to be sixteen?”

The answer makes them laugh: “The same.” 

Chris promised he wouldn’t drink all of them but he sure has drank a lot of them. Felix likes the wine the best, he has by conservative measures has at most four sips of alcohol today and none of them taste very good. Chris says a lot of people like the alcoholic club sodas but Felix has never been one for seltzer water. When he was little he used to call it “mean water,” and the sentiment is still there. Why would he let the carbonation burn his throat for such a lackluster flavor. 

Drunk Chris, which is what he is now, drunk, is handsy. He’s handsier than sober Chris, though sober Chris has tried but well-

“Chris we talked about this,” Felix says, moving Chris’ hands up from Felix’s ass again with a chiding look. 

Chris buries his face into the juncture of Felix’s neck and shoulder, puffs breath into the skin there.

“Sorry, it’s just so hard to resist when you look so cute.” 

“I think you’re cute too,” Felix says with a placating kiss that quickly becomes much more. Felix lets Chris pull his shirt off. They’ve been shirtless in front of each other more times than Felix can count but still it feels different out of the water. He shivers in the cold while Chris shirks his own before pulling Felix back down on top of him. 

The music sounds louder closer to the floor. Closer to the ground.

Chris’s hands feel heavy dragging across his bare skin. 

Felix swears he can hear the pound of the waterfalls farther down the creek reverberating in the ground. 

Felix loves Chris. 

He swears it’s the pounding of his blood matching the running water that makes his fingertips feel like they are vibrating. 

Felix loves Chris, but he doesn't feel loved right now. His breath is sharp and his hands are heavy. 

Felix imagines the waterfall washing over him. 

Chris must be- the alcohol must be making him forget because his hands are back. 

He imagines the cold water rushing over him and brushing everything off. 

Felix feels too tired to tell Chris to move his hands, maybe not too tired, maybe not too scared, but afraid to disappoint him. It is his birthday. 

Or the water, hot like it is in the summer, in the shallow parts of the creek. Hot, almost painful. 

He doesn’t want to make it awkward. It’s them, he doesn’t want to make them awkward. 

Felix thinks about their first kiss, the lake they haven’t been to in so long. 

Felix doesn’t say anything, but when Chris slips his hands under the shorts, skin to skin he pulls back. 

“Chris I-” Felix looks at him, leaned up against the hideout wall, hair a mess and face flushed. Eyes glazed over. He looks so different from the boy Felix met all those years ago. 

“I’m scared.” 

Chris blinks, and then smiles, “of what?”

What is Felix scared of these days, when was the last time he let himself think about it?

“I just don’t want to go farther.” 

Chris rolls his eyes and smiles but it’s the kind of smile Felix recognizes from school when someone at lunch will say something and Felix will respond and everyone acts like a joke just went over his head but no one will explain it to him. Will it really ruin everything so much to just explain the joke to him?

Chris hasn’t moved his hands. 

“What?” Felix asks. 

“You say that, but it won’t be so bad. You’re just psyching yourself out.” 

“I want to someday but-” 

“You always say that.” 

“It’s still true!” 

“Felix, we’re running out of time, it’s us, it’s me. C’mon.” 

Felix hesitates. What is he scared of?

“I-” Felix feels the pulse again, now from where his knees touch the ground, a thumping in the forest very core it feels like, “I- I don’t think-” 

Chris squeezes his hands. “Is this so bad?” 

“I-” Felix is cut off by a thump and a swoosh in his peripherals that has him automatically squeezing his eyes shut. 

“Get your hands off him you disgusting-” Felix opens his eyes and turns his head just in time to see Jisung’s face as he swings the shovel up. “-freak.” 

There’s no time. Felix tries to reach out, to stop him somehow, but he’s too late. The shovel comes down with a sickening crack, and warm blood hits Felix’s chest in a splatter. 

Jisung’s hand grips at the juncture of Felix’s neck and shoulder, the same place Chris’s lips had been minutes or hours ago, and yanks him. He yanks Felix to the side and back until he’s landing heavily on his hands and wrist into the freezing water of the creek. 

It’s not real. 

Jisung is raising the shovel again, again bringing it down, and again raising it. 

Felix wonders how-

The letters.

Jisung’s shovel tip is covered in red and something brown, and Felix thinks maybe some of Chris’s hair. 

Felix tries to turn away, to close his eyes, to end the dream faster and then he sees it. 

Chris’s blood, red and wet, splatters on their runes. 

That’s how Felix knows that this is real. That this is really happening. 

“JISUNG STOP!” Jisung doesn’t move except to bring the shovel up again. With each swing the hit is sounding less like a crack and more like a thud. 

“JISUNG PLEASE!” Felix gets up, to move towards him, to make him stop, and finally with his movement Jisung turns to him. His light blue jumper is stained with Chris’s blood. He’s using the shovel Felix used to make the hole to plant the sapling they got last spring. 

“Get back, Felix.” His voice is more firm than Felix has heard it before. His jaw is clenched. 

“Jisung.” He tries to sound soothing but his voice is shaking and hysterical. “Jisung please, you’re hurting him.” Felix’s voice cracks on each word. He takes a step forward and Jisung takes a step back, even closer to Chris and- Felix’s knees shake. 

“He touched you Felix.” He says it like the words make him sick. 

“It’s okay Jisung!” Felix lies quickly, desperately. 

“It’s NOT!”

“I wanted him to.” Felix feels like his ribs are splitting apart, like his lungs feel heavy and wet and and and and-

“You’re lying!” Jisung looks shocked and betrayed, his mouth open like Felix has hurt him. “He’s made you lie for him?!” Jisung twists back and slams the shovel into the mess of Chris’ head again. He hasn’t made a sound in so long. 

Felix throws himself at Jisung - not thinking, only wanting him to stop, but Jisung is squirmy and throws him off, pushing Felix back into the water. 

He’s muttering as he hits him. It’s not a hymn from what Felix can hear, it’s not a hymn but he’s saying it like it’s one. Like it will save him. 

“You ruined him, you tried to spoil him, and now I-” 

Felix needs help. That's all he can think, choking back his own shivers and sobs sitting in the freezing water. He needs help. He can’t. He can’t do this. 

He tries for his phone, but it’s not in his pockets, which is good maybe because surely the water damage would have done it in. No, it’s in the hideout. He can see it, next to Chris’s on the ground to the left of them. On the ground to the left of what's left of them.

He crawls forward, trying not to alert Jisung to his movements. If he can just get to his or Chris’s phone then he can call someone. The police, the ambulance, his parents, someone. 

But his brother sees him. He should know, his brother has always played extra special attention to Felix. 

Jisung sees where his hand is reaching and redirects his shovel down in a new direction. Felix cries out when Jisung shatters his hand, but he still hears the splash of the phones being thrown in the water. 

Something changes from that moment. A part of Felix’s brain stops. Things are less clear, like they might be happening to someone else. 

Jisung’s hands are on his face. His breath doesn’t smell like alcohol and he yells then apologizes then shoves Felix back into the water again. Back into the creek. 

Felix sees the moment Jisung notices the anklet. 

“Did he put a tag on you?” It comes out shockingly calm. Jisung throws the shovel down into the water, near enough to Felix that it splashes across his chest again. For a moment Felix feels hope. 

Then Jisung pulls the hammer from his belt loops. Of course, a hammer, didn’t Felix remember the paper?

Jisung doesn’t wait for Felix to answer, to speak at all before he’s grabbing Felix’s squirming legs and pulling it towards where he crouches in the water. Felix tries to pull himself back but Jisung only needs to raise the hammer threateningly for Felix to stop. He uses the back end. 

It comes down in a wicked pull, a nasty snag, tearing into the skin of Felix’s ankle to hook onto the anklet. But the thing about titanium is it doesn’t like to break. So the hammer comes down again and again and again. Jisung switches the side of the hammer and hits the chain with the mallet end before scraping at it again. 

This will never end. That's what Felix thinks when he reaches for the shovel. 

This will never stop. 

Jisung tears through Felix’s flesh to get to the chain in a craze that can only be called desperation, and it breaks. Jisung’s cry of triumph is cut short by the shovel coming in contact with his head. 

Felix is sixteen and the water runs red.

Unlike Jisung, Felix only hits once. Jisung is face down in the creek when Felix drops the shovel and crawls towards him. It takes all of Felix’s strength to turn him on his side. 

Things are so far away. 

The water is so cold. 

Felix knows he cannot rest. 

He uses the shovel, the shovel that revolts him, to support him as he limps and staggers forward. To the closest house he knows. 

He throws down the shovel when he gets to the porch. He crawls on his hands and knees to the door and past the threshold and he screams. 

“GRANNY” he yells; voice is horse and he can’t stop, “GRANNY GRANNY IT’S FELIX-” This feels so important, like she might not recognize him. He sees her slippers, her walker. 

“Felix? Boy whats wrong, what happen-” 

“Granny I need the phone-” 

“You’re hurt! Where’s Christopher?” 

A wet slap hits the side of the house. And another. Tip Tap.

“Granny- the phone-”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this. It's almost a year in the making and completely unlike anything I've written before. Man! Horror is hard and draining to write so big big big props to people who write it regularly!
> 
> Kirby's [Twit](https://twitter.com/faerieji)  
>    
> Nova's [Twit](https://twitter.com/sevngsvng)  
>    
> Heres my info:  
> [My NSFW twitter (minors dni)](https://twitter.com/translixie)  
>    
> [CC for yelling](https://curiouscat.me/translixie)


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